


Friends Of Fate

by thepetulantpen



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: All the relationships are platonic, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, first chapter is posted on my tumblr in parts (same username), just battles, longest fanfic ive ever written so bear with me while i figure that out, not graphic or anything, not sure what to tag tbh, unless you really squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2019-10-24 20:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 52,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17711003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepetulantpen/pseuds/thepetulantpen
Summary: What if the adventurers met each other in a different order?Featuring: a criminal who thinks she’s all that and a disaster tiefling who just crawled out of a grave; an impulsive half-orc who is in way over his head and a homeless wizard man who definitely doesn’t have anything shady going on; and a happy blue person, a small green person and a goth-colored person.





	1. Introductions At Various Points In Time

**BEAU AND MOLLY**

Beau is a shitty kid living in a shitty town with a shitty family. Not the shittiest kid, nor the shittiest town, nor the shittiest family. But shitty nonetheless. 

She’s in the woods, messing around as is typical for punks like herself. She’s alone today, as is not typical for punks like herself. The equally awful people she hangs out with weren’t available for their usual meet up to stand around and kick dirt while thinking of stupid things to do next time they get drunk. 

Nothing ever happens in these woods. No weird beasts, no bandits, not even any cool birds. 

So a stumbling, lavender tiefling, covered in dirt, isn’t exactly par for the course. 

The... guy? Girl? Person? Pushes through the bushes and strives blindly out towards the road, apparently content to ignore Beau completely. 

“Whoa! Hey, what the... what the fuck, dude?” 

The tiefling‘s head swivels towards her and stares at her blindly with their solid red eyes. Says nothing. Just stares. 

This isn’t any of Beau’s business. But it is weird as hell. 

“What- where did you come from?”

Nothing. 

“Come on man, you just busted out of the woods lookin' like you dragged yourself through shit. I just want to know what’s up.”

A blink. No words. 

“Can... can you talk?”

Silence. Of course.

“Alright well... do you understand me at least?” 

Their head tilts and their mouth opens to produce a hoarse whisper. Beau has no idea what it was, but it was a sound, at least. 

She moves closer. The tiefling doesn’t flinch. 

“What?”

“....empty.”

It’s barely a word but it’s real creepy, especially the rough voice and the terrifying, blank eyes. 

“Are you... are you fucking possessed? The fuck is happening right now?” 

They don’t respond. 

Beau backs up, suddenly unsure about all this. She probably shouldn’t get involved. 

The tiefling takes a step forward with her, which would have been threatening and creepy if they didn’t immediately trip over air and nearly fall on their face. Beau’s instincts built up from constantly being around people getting shitfaced kick in and she catches them, despite not making a conscious decision to. 

Her new tiefling friend tries to stand again and manages it on shaky legs, like a deer’s. 

She should really just leave them here, not get involved in whatever weird shit this is. But she’s never been the type to listen to common sense. 

She’s more the type to impulsively take in some random tiefling from the woods who can’t even speak and might be possessed to stay at one of her friend’s unused drug labs. Which is to say a shack with a weird smell. 

“Come on, buddy. Let’s get you somewhere to stay.”

...

**FJORD AND CALEB**

Fjord looks back at the port, one more time. He watches the waves and feels a sense of family, of pain, and of pure dread, all at once. He hears sea shanties, an explosion, and ominous words echoing in the void of his dreams. He sees the crew, angry water, and a yellow eye. Saltwater climbs up his throat and fills his nose and his eyes sting. Shaking his head and hefting his pack, he turns his back on the ocean, and whatever’s haunting him within it, and walks away.

It’s time to leave.

…

The man is just another beggar standing by a fire for warmth but he’s staring at the fire like it’s stolen something from him, like it took the life right out of those empty eyes and burned it up. Or, perhaps, he burned it himself and has found himself cold on the inside, soul sacrificed for the sake of physical warmth.

Stupid thoughts. Fjord’s been alone for too long, it’s driving him crazy.

He knows he shouldn’t bother the stranger, that he should go about his own business, be on his way to decide who he’s going to be and how he’s going to start his new life on his own, with no shifty humans to distract him.

The man makes his way around the back of the nearest building- a store of some sort, Fjord doesn’t look very hard- with a flame in his hands and desperation in his eyes.

_Dammit._

Fjord can’t just watch this happen.

…

Caleb feels a firm hand on his shoulder and doesn’t think or feel anything, he hasn’t in many years. Being spun around to face a half-orc he’s never seen before doesn’t provoke a reaction, he’s so tired and hungry and gone.

“Hey now, no need to do anything you’ll regret. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll get you some food and place to stay for the night?”

His words wrap around Caleb like a homemade quilt or an expensive new uniform or an old coat on a cold night. He’s nodding in agreement before he even really knows what he’s doing. It’s been so long since anyone has given him anything resembling kindness so, despite not believing the orc’s sincerity, he follows. There’s not really much else to do at this point.

“What’s your name?”

He speaks slowly, like Caleb is horse that could spook at any moment. A horse with dangerous magic and a frighteningly apathetic look in his eyes.

“Uh, Caleb,” he glances away briefly for inspiration and finds only the dying wisps of the fire he left behind, “Caleb… Widogast. And who are you, generous stranger?”

“I’m… Fjord. Just Fjord.”

Caleb nods and that’s all there is to it.

They make their way to a cheap inn. Fjord pays and Caleb says he’ll pay him back, sometime. Fjord knows he’s lying and decides to not say anything. Caleb decides not to think about whether Fjord is being truthful about anything. It doesn’t matter. Almost nothing does, these days.

When they settle down in their room, Caleb elects to ignore Fjord lying awake in the bed next to him and Fjord doesn’t mention any of the mostly, but not entirely, nonsense words Caleb mutters in his sleep.

This could work. 

...

**THE GALS (Jester, Nott and Yasha)**

Nott is just looking to steal something, preferably money. Or food. Or, hell, she could even go for some buttons just to make her feel better. 

Yasha is just looking for a job, preferably traveling around the empire. Or any job. Or, hell, she’ll even settle with the circus if she can’t find anyone else. 

Jester is just hoping to make it to the next town before her money runs out, preferably with a new friend. Or a new paint set. Or, hell, she’s always got the Traveler with her. 

It’s probably fate that they all run into each other. 

Or a massive narrative screw up.

Jester is, despite popular opinion, not an idiot. She is simply… challenged in rating priorities. It’s not that she _can’t_ see past a scam, just that she’s weak to resist the pull of useless tourist traps and lying advertisers. Of course, it’s easy for her to spot the little goblin “sneaking” up behind her on the wide open road but she doesn’t do anything about it, more curious to see what’ll happen than she is concerned for her belongings.

Bending over to examine a pretty flower by the road, Jester lets her dangling coin purse stick out and become accessible to her height challenged thief. The new position adjusts her peripheral vision to give her a clear view of the goblin’s excited face at the easy mark, scrambling through the dirt with a somewhat drunken gait towards the mass of blue skirts and blue skin that is Jester.

Jester plays her part well, sitting passively as her pockets are rummaged through and the goblin tugs at the coin purse, finding it to be empty, save for a copper piece. In the end, Jester’s mirth gets the best of her and she starts to giggle at the same time she hears heavy footsteps and the high pitched yelping of her new green friend.

“Let me go! Put me down!”

The goblin has a funny little voice, high and screeching with every word, croaky in a shrill way. The woman holding her hasn’t spoken yet but Jester suspects she will have a very deep voice, if those muscles and that complicated, gothic armor are any indicator.

The strange, tall goth holding a squirming goblin is a fascinating sight, easily the funniest thing Jester has seen by far on this solitary road trip.

“This guy was, uh,” the woman grimaces, as the goblin’s claws take a useless swipe at her arm, “trying to steal your things.”

“Oh, I know!” Jester smiles brightly at the confused, friendly stranger, then turns to the goblin, “Ah, I’m sure you’re a very accomplished thief! But on the open road, well, you didn’t do a very good job. It was pretty funny, actually.”

The goblin abandons her snarl for just a moment to look briefly insulted, and the woman lowers her arm, dangling the goblin just a few tantalizing inches from the ground like a forgotten toy she’s dragging along.

“You… knew you were being robbed.”

“It can hardly be called a robbery if it’s only a copper piece. Besides, this gives me something much more valuable in return!” Jester grins in a manner that would terrify anybody that knows her well. Although, judging from their concerned expressions, the strangers seem to pick up on the scheming face pretty quickly.

Jester, with all her sparkles and her cheery attitude, throws her hands out towards her new friends, inviting them into her world.

“Company!”

The goblin and the goth give each other the same incredulous look but Jester ignores it and takes their hands, tugging them backwards along the road, rattling off questions about where they’re from, where they’re going, who they are, what their favorite colors are, what their favorite pastries are and more until they’re absolutely dizzy with the unending motion and noise of Jester’s presence.

It'll certainly be an interesting trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the first chapter, introducing the groups of characters! From here on, each chapter will be focused on only one of those groups, and it'll be updated weekly (or whenever I finish editing that particular part!). 
> 
> I was inspired by some really fascinating character dynamics that haven't been fully explored in the show and the possible differences in character development that could result from such a change in the original friendship dynamics, so I decided to write a whole thing about it! 
> 
> This will clock in at around 25,000 words when it's finished, which is the longest thing I've ever written. I've been working on this for months, so hopefully you enjoy! Stay tuned!


	2. My Friend, The Amnesiac

**BEAU AND MOLLY**

The tiefling doesn’t speak for days. 

They’re still dazed the next day, only managing to eat some scraps of food and gulp down the jug of water Beau brings. 

By day two, they at least seem to understand what Beau is saying. 

By day three, they start nodding and shaking their head when asked simple questions. Nothing about what happened to them, just whether they’re still hungry or need more water. 

By day four, Beau gets them to answer a few multiple-choice questions with hand gestures. “They” are actually a “he”, though he doesn’t seem especially committed to the idea. And he’s picked up on shrugging pretty well as it seems to be his go-to response for most questions. 

By day five, Beau decides she’s done trying to interrogate the seemingly mute tiefling. She has better uses of her time. Like hanging out with her friends. The tiefling agrees. 

They head out to town together. 

...

Beau and her friends teach the tiefling many things, things they probably shouldn’t be teaching him, seeing as he is super impressionable. He claims he hasn’t tried basically anything; never had booze, never been in a fight, never had strawberries. 

When Beau asks, he admits (with a nod) that he’s lost his memory. Nothing before that afternoon in the woods. 

“That... that sucks. Any idea what happened to you?”

He frowns deeply and shakes his head. 

“Do you want to find out? We could go... I dunno. Look for clues?”

He shakes his head again. A resound “no”.

“Oh. Why not?”

Stupid question. Beau always forgets she can’t ask “why” questions, she won’t get any answer aside from a noncommittal shrug. 

The tiefling makes a weird face, all scrunched up like he’s trying to do mental math and it’s just not working out. 

“....bad.... guy.”

“Whoa! Words! That’s progress man. No idea what the fuck you mean, but progress!”

He smiles, a little. 

...

She brings him to a library, figures he should probably be exposed to more than just her usual criminal activities. 

He doesn’t have much patience for books, doesn’t seem to want to read at all, fidgets too much. Always too eager to get to the next thing instead of sitting around and reading. Beau begins to feel like she’s babysitting and she didn’t sign up for that shit, so they leave. He seems happy just following her around anyway, no matter what she does. 

Beau tows him along like a lost puppy, hesitant to leave him to his own devices anywhere. Her fellow criminals are a little confused by the presence of a strange purple tiefling during their deals but they know better than to question Beau. Beau and her excellent supply of alcohol. 

She only realizes the potential benefit of having him around when one of her contacts comes in with a particularly bad attitude. Tracy is usually one of her best, always up to hang out and be acquaintances in the short times Beau sees her, but today she is all business, upset about anything that doesn’t get her the best alcohol for the best price.

“The fuck is your problem today? You know the price, you know the deal. Stick to it or get out.”

Tracy makes a frustrated noise and gets up in Beau’s face, hands flying up as if she’s going to strike Beau but she’s not sure if she’s going for a slap or a punch. Beau straightens, ready for a fight and eager to see if Tracy really has the balls to stand up to her. She doesn’t really think about the fact that she doesn’t have any experience in fighting besides stupid brawls in the street or the ones her imagination spins out of thin air to build a better reputation. 

Luckily, she’s got back up. 

Tracy freezes, just before her raised hand has the opportunity to do anything. There’s a dagger at her throat and a hoarse voice hissing Infernal in her ear. Her sight moves as far into her peripheral as she can force her eyes and she catches only the wide, smiling face of a tiefling. His smile is _too_ pleasant, there’s a very clear threat in those glossy white fangs, if his intentions weren't already made obvious by her own knife pressed against her jugular. Its placement is precise and careful, the measured aim of a person who knows where all the best blood vessels are, rather than a street thug going for any area that looks like it could hurt. 

“Don’t threaten me, Tracy.”

Tracy just hisses, in an… actually sort of odd way. Her eyes look different and they’re- 

Tracy strikes out with an elbow and hits the tiefling in the gut, making the knife slip and cut into her, blood gushes but she doesn’t look bothered as she shakes him off, backing up to the door. Her face lifts, exposing what’s underneath her hood, and Beau has the abrupt and very obvious realization that _this is not Tracy_. The eyes are snake-like and her tongue is forked, like a tiefling’s, but it moves like a normal tongue can’t, twisting out of her mouth, _too_ flexible. It’s not just the eyes and the tongue, all of her _skin_ is pale and almost green, texture like rot in some places, and her bones shine through on her cheek, marring the face Beau had always thought was beautiful. 

Beau and the tiefling both tense for further conflict, Beau readying herself in an amateur defensive stance and the tiefling poised like a trap about to snare anything that gets within range of his knife, but Tracy, or whoever it is, just gives them one final hiss, revealing fangs longer than should be able to fit in her mouth. 

“You’ll regret messing with us, _Beauregard_.”

And with that, she is gone, backing out quickly through the door and down the road.

Beau turns to her tiefling, who looks absolutely thrilled by this turn of events.

“What’re you so happy about? More importantly, the fuck did I do? I haven’t jacked up prices or anything!” 

The tiefling just grins and shrugs. 

“Tracy is usually so easy- she’s just throwing stupid parties anyway! She’s definitely got the coin to pay up.”

The tiefling nods, tilting his head in a show of attention. 

“Maybe she’s just getting greedy…” 

The tiefling scrunches up his nose and nods in mutual disgust. 

“Or she’s possessed. What _was_ that?”

There’s an expression on her friend’s face she’s never seen before, which is incredible as she thought they’d already expended the full spectrum of silent gestures. It’s a dark cloud, passing through his pupil-less eyes and across the furrow of his brow. Terrifying, like nothing she thought this goofy tiefling could be capable of. 

“Abomination.” His voice is definitely very hoarse, like he’s struggling to keep his words at an audible volume, but the word is clear and it means absolutely nothing to Beau.

“Uh,” she starts, stalls, and plunges ahead again, “Yeah, probably? That mean anything to you?”

He just shrugs and Beau lets it go, vowing to get the answer another day. Preferably when he can speak without sounding like he’s swallowed glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of a short chapter, but it made the most sense to cut it there so I hope you'll bear with me on this crazy journey of organizing chapters in a kind of scattered story.


	3. Are We There Yet?

**THE GALS**

It’s the dead of night and Nott knows, rationally, that she could probably sneak away without the others noticing, but after today’s miserable failure she really doesn’t feel like testing her skills. Besides, she’s pretty sure Jester is only pretending to be asleep and is absolutely sure that Yasha is watching Nott more closely than the road.

Carefully, she unravels the tight ball she’s rolled herself into, opening big, yellow eyes to pierce through the dark night. The darkness doesn’t really bother her, her only indicator of low light is the somewhat dulled colors of the greenery surrounding their makeshift camp. When she sits up, Yasha turns her head towards her, tracking her movements. Although not aggressive, the stare is intimidating and gives the impression that Yasha sees all, taking her newly, unofficially appointed job as Jester’s unpaid bodyguard very seriously.

Nott has not quite pinned down what’s going on with the cheerful tiefling girl they’ve both been roped into being friends with, she’s either irrationally nice, certifiable insane or naïve to the eleventh degree. Possibly all of the above.

Her talking is constant, presumptuous and irrefutably cheerful, making it impossible to deter her from her efforts to be friends with strangers she’s met on the road. Trying to convince Nott to chat with her, “hiring” Yasha when she said she was on her way to find a job; all crazy, but still undeniably... sweet. Nott will admit, at least privately, that it's nice to not have somebody run screaming from her immediately. Even Yasha, with her careful, watchful nature, hasn't really seem put off by the goblin-ness so much as she just distrusts all strangers. 

Nott’s ears twitch towards the sound of Jester pretending to wake up, the rustling of crumpled, pretty clothes that she’s forced to sleep in and use as a pillow. Jester’s eyes are just as blue as her skin and her hair, but they look more or less like human eyes, composed with the average sized pupil and iris. Nothing like Nott’s cat-like eyes or Yasha’s mismatched eyes. They do, however, glow just like Nott’s in the night, giving an eerie sheen to the otherwise innocent, girlish face. 

"What's wrong, Nott? Can't sleep?"

Jester looks more hopeful than concerned, an obvious ploy to have an excuse to stay up longer, restless on this cold night with new friends. Nott isn't going to burst her bubble so she just scoots closer, willing to talk, if she has to in order to preserve Jester’s bright, infectiously light attitude. 

Already invested in this stranger after only an afternoon. 

"It's just cold out here, is all." Nott's voice croaks as it usually does, and it makes her head hurt, _wrong, wrong, wrong_. 

"Oh! Of course, here-" Jester's voice is just as warm and soft as her little shawl, big enough to be a coat on Nott, but also... strange. The coastal accent simply marks her as foreigner but the lilting inflections suggest something beyond that: an outsider, as if the horns and the vibrant blue skin weren't enough.

"It'll be warmer if we cuddle. Do you want to cuddle, Nott?"

Nott does not want to cuddle. Jester is a stranger and Nott never cuddles, not with anyone, not since _before_ , but. Well, it is cold. 

"Uh, sure?"

It's really less a cuddle and more a loose hug with Jester's arm draped over Nott's tiny form in an attempt not to grab Nott outright and instead ease her into the cuddling process. Nott isn't practiced in reading people but Jester’s face is so open, so clear, and she finds no disgust there, only careful concentration. Trying to be close enough for warmth and not encroach on any boundaries at the same time. Perhaps she does understand that they're only strangers, after all.

Nott expected Jester to be uncomfortable with not only the idea of cuddling a goblin but also getting so close to somebody, with them against her blue skin and curled, pointed horns.

And yet, Jester doesn't seem disturbed by her appearance, not like Nott, comfortable in ways Nott could never be as she squirms in Jester's embrace, upset every time her long ears brush an arm or her claw-like nails catch on fabric. 

She kicks herself for projecting her own shortcomings on someone else. Tieflings, after all, can easily walk through town without trouble, unlike goblins. 

"Yasha!"

Yasha doesn't jump at Jester's sudden outburst, Nott doesn't think anybody that big is even capable of startling, just turns calmly, as if she's been travelling with Jester all her life and knows her mannerisms well. Although, she supposes that isn’t very impressive considering Jester’s mannerisms are not terribly difficult to learn. 

"Yes?"

"Come cuddle! Me and Nott are warming up!" she looks down at Nott, smiling ear to ear, and Nott can't help but smile back. This could be nice, right?

Yasha, with the way she holds herself and the awkwardness practically printed across her forehead, is clearly not the cuddling type but her eyes do one last useless sweep across the landscape, Nott has noticed that her eyes don't glow like Jester's which makes sense for a human, before she resignedly plops down beside Jester and Nott's pile, falling, like Nott, to Jester's puppy dog eyes and welcoming smile. 

Two sets of glowing eyes and three very different looking creatures settle down on the quiet dirt road that night, trying, and failing, to keep proper watch.

They’re all broke anyway. What is there to lose? 

…

Jester is pleasantly surprised to find them all in one piece the next morning. Though, she really shouldn’t be since the Traveler agreed to watch her and her new friends, just this one time. She doesn’t see him anywhere but she knows he would help her, anyway he could. 

“I can’t believe we’re still alive.” Surprise is a more amusing expression on Nott's face than most people's, with her massive eyes widening to take up even more of her face than they did previously. She looks to Yasha for support and Yasha grunts obligingly, scanning to road as if the bandits are just a bit late and lying in wait for them. 

Jester giggles, she already knew this would happen and their shock makes the whole thing and even better. Maybe this is why the Traveler agreed to help, he probably knew it would be so hilarious! 

“Of course we’re alive! I _told_ you, the Traveler is protecting us.” 

Jester is not accustomed to having people look at her like she’s crazy but she’s quickly acclimated herself to it, resolving to be content with herself even without her mom’s constant support and approval. 

“Jester, if you don’t mind me asking, _what_ is the traveler?” Yasha seems reluctant to even talk to them, but Jester hopes that she’ll keep trying. 

“The Traveler is a god, of course! He’s the one who teaches me all this amazing magic!” Jester waggles her fingers, to illustrate her point, “He’s also my best ever friend, after my mom. My mom is my best friend but the Traveler is a very, very good friend. I’ve known him forever!”

“Do you… do you see the traveler?” Nott’s question sounds a little bit different than the time her mom asked the same thing, more carefully concealed suspicion than open amusement. 

“Sometimes!” 

Yasha rubs the back of her neck, glancing away from the group. Jester just _knows_ she wants to say something. 

“What about you, Yasha? Do you know any gods?”

“I, uh,” Yasha is probably going to lie, if her time trying to formulate an answer is anything to go off of, “Not really. I mean. No?”

Nott looks back and forth between them, realizing she’s _surrounded_ by these insane people and has no way of escaping this conversation. 

“Oh, come on, Yash! You can tell me.” Jester leans in, standing directly beside Yasha’s imposing height like not many others would dare to. 

Yasha looks to Nott like she might find an out there but finds only a confused distress matching her own. 

“I, I guess I have a god I worship. It’s not, um. Legal though, here, I think.”

“What’d you mean?”

“It’s not one of the approved gods.”

“What? What are the approved gods?”

“I,” Yasha looks at Nott again and determines, from her helpless shrug, that she won’t be any help, “I don’t remember them all. Probably not the traveler.”

“Huh. The Empire is odd.”

“You said you’re from the coast, right, Jester?” Nott doesn’t look so terrified anymore, just a little weary. With this subject change, she’ll only be dealing with tourists, not crazy fanatics. 

“Yes! Nicodranas, the prettiest little ocean town you’ll ever see!”

“And Yasha?”

Jester knows that this is not a Yasha approved question, she clumsily dodged it earlier and has been avoiding discussions of her life before their little group got together. Nowhere to hide on this one, though. 

Jester itches to reach for her magic, to _make_ them tell the truth, but the impulse passes after a moment. These are her _friends_ now, she shouldn’t do something like that unless it's necessary. 

“I’m from the North. Just a little outside the Empire.” Yasha winces after she says this, like she tripped over her feet, verbally. 

This doesn’t mean anything to Jester, she’s never bothered to learn maps, but it clearly means something Nott, who doesn’t say anything, frustratingly, but narrows her eyes at Yasha like she’s just done something radical. Yasha only rubs the back of neck, looking off on the horizon, as if searching for something. 

_Looking for home, waiting for something or just trying to avoid eye contact?_

Jester claps her hands, breaking up the tense silence. “It’ll be so fun to explore a new place, huh? Aren’t we almost to a town?”

“We have no idea. We don’t have a map.” Nott doesn’t look frustrated anymore, just tired. Jester wonders why she hasn’t run off, but is so glad she hasn’t. She’s so interesting, and Jester is, in spite of common sense, sure that this little group wouldn’t be complete without this little goblin. 

“Well, I’m sure it’ll be fine! After all, we have each other!” Jester prides herself on being always cheerful, making people feel good. Just like her mom, but in a different way. Her friends don’t smile, per se, but the miserable expressions disappear for a moment and they seem more focused on the optimistic future Jester is envisioning. 

Even with storm clouds dotting the horizon, Jester is certain that her and her new friends will have a lovely adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gals having a very pleasant chat. Absolutely nothing could go wrong in the future.


	4. Identity Theft

**FJORD AND CALEB**

Fjord is just happy to have gotten Caleb into a bed outside of a prison cell. He didn’t really think about what he would do afterwards.

It’s always been a bad habit of his, poking his nose into things he probably shouldn’t and acting on those things impulsively. At least he did some good with his snooping, this time. And, well, there could be something in it for him, if he plays his cards right. 

Caleb is still there in the morning, which is a little surprising, so Fjord buys them breakfast. It’s bad, but likely better than anything Caleb has had in a while, judging from the sad state of his ragged, muddy clothes and face. He’s just staring and chewing right now, concentrating on the wood grain of the tavern wall rather than even glancing at Fjord. When Fjord clears his throat, Caleb instantly comes to attention, eyes trained on his face looking carefully for… something, gods know what.

“I’m going to be heading east. I was expecting to take the trip alone but, well, since the opportunity has arisen, I figure the trip might be easier, and safer, with some company. Would you be interested or do you have… other plans?”

Caleb stares at him, incredulous, perhaps at the offer or perhaps at the implication that he has any plans, for a moment before his face straightens back into the stoic mask he usually wears.

“I do not have plans. But do you have a plan, besides just heading east? A destination? A purpose?”

Fjord is happy to see Caleb forming coherent sentences despite all his dazed staring and numb disinterest. There may be hope for this partnership yet.

Although, that means he’ll have to start coming up with responses that hold up under paranoid scrutiny.

“Just travelling for the moment, doing odd jobs. Wherever the work is, you know how it is.” Fjord is not sure Caleb 'knows how it is'. 

Caleb nods, coming to some sort of understanding. What sort of understanding and what experience this understanding stems from, however, is information Fjord is not keen to pry into. He doubts he’ll ever really know how Caleb interprets Fjord’s words, he doesn’t have the context needed to fully analyze the soot-covered man.

“Ja, alright. Let’s go.”

...

Fjord, even in all his impulsiveness, managed to plan ahead enough, finishing off some jobs on the down-low before he split town, to be able to travel comfortably until he found profitable work. 

He did not manage to plan for taking in a homeless wizard. 

Extra meals and supplies take a bit of a toll, not enough to hinder them immediately but enough that diminishing funds will be noticeable sooner than Fjord would have liked. 

Caleb picks up on this, despite Fjord’s best efforts to keep from pressuring him. He’s scared to ask Caleb for too much, afraid he’ll lose him altogether if pushed. 

Fjord works harder to find odd jobs for them to do but there’s nearly nothing going on in these tiny towns they’re hitting along the way, it reminds him of his days begging for work at the docks, desperate for anything that’ll keep him from starving. He’s thinking they might need to start moving quicker towards the main roads when Caleb starts coming back to the tavern with coin. 

At first, Caleb insists that he’s simply been doing favors for some people he’s met in town. Fjord doesn’t believe him but just lets it go, happy to see some coin, at least. It stings a bit to see that the homeless wizard who looks as if he hasn’t bathed in weeks, let alone held a stable job, managed to provide better than him, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is forming a new plan of action. 

He doesn’t even get to do that before Caleb decides for him by coming back one day with a much more substantial amount of silver than usual and a distressed look on his normally emotionless face. 

“We should- we should go. Start back on the road again. Today. Now.” 

“What did you- you know what, never mind, I’ll get the cart.”

....

“I am not very good at thievery, you know. I can run a con, if I must, but I’m not dexterous enough to follow it through.”

“Right. Well, you live and you learn, I suppose. Hopefully the next town has better, uh, opportunities.” 

“Ja.”

“Say, if we were to inquire about jobs in town what skills do you have to offer? Just so I know what kind of things we can handle.” Fjord winces a little at the question, clumsy and too personal, like an awkwardly outstretched olive branch. 

“I... well, you know, I am fairly experienced in the arcane. I can do a few tricks that could help us. You?” Caleb's as fidgety as always when Fjord asks him questions, eager to pass the baton back to him. 

“I also have a few arcane talents. They’re more... suited for battle, as far as I can tell. I don’t, uh, actually know much about it. I only acquired... my skills recently.” Fjord knew that question was coming back to him, but dreaded it anyway, regretting his poorly thought out answer with every incomprehensible twitch in Caleb's eye. 

Caleb nods, not in understanding but acceptance. No need to open that can of worms. 

The silence stretches for a while. 

Caleb snaps his fingers. 

There’s a cat. 

Wasn’t there before. But now it is, as if thrust forth from the ether for the express purpose of scaring the shit out of Fjord. 

Fjord immediately bursts into a sneezing fit.

Caleb nearly startles off the cart, jumping like an explosion just rang out. The cat poofs out of existence, Fjord starts catching his breath. His eyes are still watery, obscuring his sight of Caleb’s expression somewhere between shock and shame, but he gives a lame thumbs up to assure he’s ok as he hacks the last cat scent out of his lungs. 

“You are, uh, allergic to cats? My apologies, I didn’t know, I- I just wanted to demonstrate- or, well, introduce Frumpkin, I didn’t realize… most people like cats, y’know, I didn’t think.”

Caleb seems more lost than is probably reasonable. It’s just a cat, after all. 

Or maybe it’s more than that. Fjord has no clue what a goddamn magic cat could mean for Caleb or him. 

“It’s quite alright, it’s just allergies. You couldn’t have known,” he takes a moment to wipe away the tears in his eyes and looks back at Caleb in genuine wonder, “Can you do any other animals?”

“Well, I can change Frumpkin to many things but spell components are costly and I usually prefer... I like cats, is all.”

They both shift awkwardly. Caleb opens his mouth again, ready to usher in a new subject with the suddenly stern, business-like voice Fjord has become familiar with. Every time Caleb lapses into something more comfortable, it’s not long before he corrects himself and gets back on task. 

“I specialize in fire. And a number of other spells useful in combat and survival.” 

Fjord blinks just once at the bluntness, drawing himself back up into the business-like persona that’s gotten a lot of use the past few days. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

...

Caleb isn't sure what to think when Fjord launches himself out of bed to vomit a bucket load of water onto the floor of their battered and, thankfully, already gross inn room.

Fjord's got a wild look in his eyes, not quite the same as fury but close, close enough to be scary. Not close enough to paralyze Caleb, but enough to make him hesitate before quietly filling a glass with the cleanest water he can find and giving it to Fjord.

"Thanks, Caleb, I-" Fjord is not often at a loss for words, they usually spill, hollow and repetitive, from his mouth like smoke from a house catching fire. His dream must've been pretty bad.

"It's alright. You should go back to sleep, hm?" Caleb blinks slowly down at him, insomnia and shot nerves slowing his mind enough to weaken the conversation, but not enough to stop his racing thoughts. 

Fjord sits back on the bed, resting back against the wall. He glances over at Caleb, quiet in the early hours, but just as polite. "Did I wake you?"

"No," Caleb thinks, briefly, of his own nightmare, shards in his arms, burning, _burning_ \- "No, you didn't."

"You should probably sleep too, in that case."

Fjord has that strange look again, like he had at the very start, on that fateful street corner. The look Caleb imagines one would wear when they attempt to rescue a stray cat, all pity and a misplaced sense of justice. But Fjord is special in the way his conveys an odd honesty, beneath all that foolish hope is an understanding that he may not ever really be able to help Caleb or get the whole truth, and that he may never want to.

That's alright with Caleb. Maybe it's fine to just have someone else in the room to watch his back, provide extra reassurance and safety that magic cannot always achieve.

They both sleep soundly through the last few hours they have until dawn, for the first night in a very long time, wrapped in a layer of secretive camaraderie that is sure to shatter, eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonding time with the boys! Road trips are always fun and never dangerous or awkward, right?


	5. Identity Crisis

**BEAU AND MOLLY**

The Tiefling, for that is all he knows to call himself, is feeling more and more like himself every day. Every old shard he discards, and every new piece he creates, makes everything feel right again. With Beau, the queen of personal rebellions, at his side, he feels that he can do anything, even if it means defying the body he’s taken hold of. 

There’s still the rebellious whispers in the back of his head from an old life, encouraging the undesirable reality of his nightmares, but he’s gotten so much better at ignoring them, at dooming them to the void of his memory, a black hole sucking in everything that belonged to the corpse they buried in the ground. 

His voice is coming back, and he takes the chance to twist the unfamiliar baritone into something that’ll further his new goals, subverting it into cheerier inflections for sugary sweet lies and taking advantage of its threatening Infernal when he needs to be the demon people see in him. 

Beau’s “friends” (her words, not his) help a lot. Not intentionally, of course, but they teach him so many things he absorbs into his new life, anything that irritates those dark impulses carried over from the grave. They’re all drifters, moving from town to town by necessity or indecision. Some of them are simple criminals, like Beau, some of them are people who associate with criminals, addicts and thrill-seekers, and some of them are just idiots, wandering into the wrong circles with little knowledge of what they’re getting into until they’re already in over their heads. 

From the stoner, he learns the power of letting go of reality and placing his faith in other realms, respecting the force of things they cannot see. It’s definitely nonsense, the ramblings of a man stuck in the corrupted halls of his own mind, but it strikes a nerve with him, the odd chemical impulses he learns to resist reminding him of the dead man’s instincts that attempt to take over every day. But the most important thing he learns is not a lesson at all; it's a feeling, the kind he gets when him and Beau trip balls together and laugh at all the new colors of the warped world. One bad trip, Molly sees himself with blood dripping from his scars, stalking him everywhere he goes, but Beau stays by him and they come down together. It’s not the first time he realizes how nice it is to have a real friend, but it is certainly a significant one. 

From the sailor, he learns how to sing sea shanties, how the unsteady waves of the world crash against a person and how to move with them to avoid dashing yourself against a rock. In a world that is constantly pushing and shoving, it is nice to know how to move with it, but not let it control you, pushing just subtly enough against the crowd to move towards your destination without resistance. A long way away from home and work in the landlocked empire, the sailor sings the Tiefling songs of the sea and the coast, tells him how she drifts through the world but she'll eventually return to the coast, to her home. Like a Mollymauk, she says, and sings him a tune the Tiefling echoes, best as he can. Beau gets it stuck in her head from his constant singing, the only song he’s heard enough to memorize, and tells him to stop but the Tiefling has learned the joys of taunting her and tells her to call him Mollymauk, so she'll never escape the cursed song. 

From the fanatic, he learns faith and its fluidity and its power. He takes all the beliefs and the morals and meshes them together into a great amalgamation of religion, stealing the bits he likes best from every entity and disregarding the things he doesn't care for, or thinks are too complicated. He’s not the type to question himself, surrounded by too many foolhardy people, so he's confident he's got this all figured out, even with the quantity, and even with the complicated nature of the gods. He collects symbols and pamphlets from the people outside shrines and from strangers in cloaks speaking in hushed tones with shifty eyes, he wants to see them all, to experience every part of this divine, unseen force that drives so many. He saves all the eyes he finds, the symbols of Ioun, as a gift for Beau, her secret favorite god. He thinks it's sort of weird that Beau is outwardly against the patience and discovery of the Mistress and privately adores her, but he doesn't comment, storing the information away for another, more appropriate time to tease her. 

From the thief, he learns courtesy and how to get what he wants. Surprisingly, the lesson isn't on stealing or even "borrowing", it is about the art of trade and how to retroactively excuse or make up for your actions to get out of feeling the consequences. The end justifying the means becomes an integral part of his life, he takes and he gives in what he considers equal measures. Always equal, adding up the things he takes and subtracting it from the life he should’ve been owed up to this point, dwindling the world’s debt to him down to nothing, one stolen trinket at a time. Beau finds his amateur thievery and amateur mischief silly but she also reaches out a hand to protect him from himself and his recklessness, tries to make sure he doesn't get into too much trouble by gifting him her experience and her support of his stupidity. 

From the brawler, he does not learn philosophy or even a fondness for his craft, but how to unlock the skills inside him, the skills he fears, without bringing out the other person within him. He flows with the action of sparring and doesn't think too hard, doesn't look deeper into the ease of the blade and the unnatural abilities that burst forth with his blood, just pushes himself and focuses on the mounting exhaustion, dripping sweat, and grinning face of the disgraced soldier. This lesson is a practicality and Beau is jealous for his skills. 

From Beau, he learns to trust. He and Beau are a team and a family, drawn in close with secrets and the desire for somebody to brace against on the worst days. Beau listens to him and he listens to her, even when they don’t agree on the minutia of it all. They tell each other everything, from gossip about random people on the streets, to Beau’s fights with her father, to anything that slips through the cracks of his memory. Beau helps build up this person, this Mollymauk, takes him to the festival he sees advertised on flyers, buys him candied apples, wins all the shitty prizes from all the shitty games to add to his growing collection of trinkets, and helps him steal and cut apart the colorful banner that fascinates him, warm colors that are sure to always make him happy, with memories of this day. He is adorned in oranges and yellows from Harvest Close, covered in a patchwork of souvenirs from the adventures of his new life, and has his arm around Beau, his only family. 

Mollymauk creates himself from nothing, putting a personality together that consists of piles of stolen, somewhat meaningful trinkets, half-remembered tunes, nonsense philosophy and misunderstood, misused skills. 

He is colorful, but only for the colors that catch his eye, the ones he _wants_ and _takes_ for himself whenever possible, not for those that catch the eyes of an audience. He is pleasant, but he wants to know what he’ll get in return, and whether it suits his and Beau’s interests. He is not a bad person, but he walks with criminals, steals with criminals. He is sure of himself, even if he does not understand the things he believes or the power he wields.

Mollymauk is a whole person composed of many parts stitched together and pasted over an abandoned grave. 

And he is looking forward to putting his borrowed wisdom to good use.

...

Mollymauk is breathing in dirt and grasping, desperately, for anything to grab onto in the air above the grave, hoping to pull himself out with the one hand he’s managed to free. He feels silky banners and meaningless trinkets slip through his fingers, everything he holds just falls away again, not rooted in anything solid.

His shoulders sting as claws rake across them, hands from beneath the earth dragging him deeper, deeper, deeper. He tries to scream before he remembers his head is submerged in dirt, but it’s already too late, mud and blood is crawling down his throat, choking him. His free hand is buried up to the wrist now as he sinks into the dirt, into the embrace of something, something calling him, beckoning him, from the grave. 

The clawed hands are solid, nothing like the banners and the trinkets he’s still trying to grab. He’s not sure, now that he thinks about it, why he was trying to escape in the first place. Sure, the dirt burns his throat and the open wounds on his chest and arms but there’s voices whispering in his ears, offering a purpose, offering _answers_ , answers that half-developed spirituality and hallucinogens can’t give him. Lucien relaxes against the monster’s grip, letting its claws dig into the scars all across his body, letting those terrible words invade his ears, knowing this is how he’s meant to be. It hurts, but there’s nothing else, no other flimsy personality to cling to anymore. 

Only the fingers on his free hand reach into the air now, flaring out in a last, dying attempt to free himself, feeling somehow, still, that this fate isn’t his, that he has another choice. 

Warm fingers intertwine with his, another hand burying itself in the dirt to dig out his arm, grabbing hold and _pulling_ with all her might. 

Mollymauk wakes up, gasping for air. Beau’s hand is on his shoulder, shaking him gently.

“You ok?” her voice is a whisper in these still, dark hours.

Molly looks up at her, she looks like she just woke up from her spot passed out on the floor after their night of drinking and partying. She’s a mess but she’s dragged herself out of sleep to sit next to Molly. He moves closer to her, head on her shoulder, and she pats his back, uncoordinated and groggy with the hangover on the horizon. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m ok.”

Molly grins, as if that’ll make it more believable, and Beau just shakes her head, settling herself down next to him.

“Night, Molly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, ok it’s a little bullshit he stills comes up with the name Mollymauk, but fate works in mysterious ways, right? Also, I really recommend that anyone who hasn't seen the lyrics to the Mollymauk sea shanty look them up cause they're awesome.


	6. Study Buddies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, there's a vague description of Caleb's panic attack in this chapter. It's brief, but I thought I'd give a warning, just in case.

**FJORD AND CALEB**

Fjord definitely feels out of place in a library. For one, he’s never especially liked people staring at him, and there’s plenty of that happening now, with him sticking out like a sore thumb, or a half-orc sailor in a building full of non-green academics. It doesn’t help that he clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing. Sure, he can read well enough, but probably not well enough for the complicated texts that Caleb piles onto the abandoned, creaky table he’s secured in the corner.

He supposes he could’ve disguised himself to look more like the typical patrons of this place, but he'd rather not reveal any of his shadier magic just yet, since Caleb certainly doesn't trust him and Fjord acting shifty could be the catalyst for him to abandon ship altogether. Or, he could’ve stayed back when Caleb asked him if he was sure he wanted to come. He could’ve just… sat around somewhere that wasn’t a library.

No, it’s good that he came. He’ll finally get a chance to see Caleb in his element, and maybe satiate some of his own curiosities.

“So, uh,” Fjord shifts uncomfortably in the stiff wooden chair, “have you studied this stuff a lot?”

Caleb doesn’t quite _look_ irritated, his poker face is too good for such cracks, but Fjord can almost _feel_ the annoyance radiating off of him at the interruption in his studies. He’s immersed himself in books and is in the process of speed reading as much as possible, relishing the opportunity of finding a decent library in this tiny little road stop of a town before they head off into the wilderness again.

“Yes. I attended a school for the arcane arts, once upon a time.” 

Caleb's face doesn't break at all, still laser-focused on his book, but it doesn't matter because Fjord isn't watching, too busy wracking his brain for what little he knows of the Empire, trying to figure if he's ever heard of a magic school. 

“I didn’t know there was such a thing. Where is it?” 

“The Soltrice Academy. In Rexentrum,” Caleb looks up from his book, at Fjord’s clueless face, “You’ve really never heard of it?”

“I’m not exactly from around here.”

Caleb looks back down at his book. “Ah, right. I’d forgotten.”

Fjord is never really sure when conversations with Caleb have ended, whether his silence is an effort to get Fjord to stop talking or if that’s just the way he is. It takes a few moments of internal debate, but his curiosity gets the better of him, as it is prone to do, and he pushes his chair back into Caleb’s space, forsaking the niceties and walls they’ve built up.

“Did you finish school there? Is that where you learned to do all the things you can do?” It's all he can do to not lean forward in his seat and rattle off questions like a child trying to figure out why the sky is blue or the leaves change color. 

Caleb flips a page, giving himself only a moment to think before he answers, “No and yes.”

“No?”

“It didn’t work out.”

“Oh,” Fjord pauses, feeling a little silly for his next question, especially talking to Caleb, of all people, “Do you think I could learn there?”

This time, Caleb looks up from his book right away, sharp gaze aimed to analyze, though it finds nothing but Fjord’s genuine nervousness. “What sort of magic are you looking to learn?”

At this, Fjord squirms again, embarrassed he doesn’t know enough to even wager a guess at that question. “I was hoping to learn a bit more about my own magic.”

Caleb squints at Fjord, trying to figure something out. Fjord wishes he knew what he was seeing.

“How did you say you came across these powers?” he leans in to whisper to Fjord, getting closer than is typically comfortable for them.

“I, uh,” Fjord looks around again, seeing no one in this secluded corner, behind the history books, but getting nervous anyway, “I just have this sword, that I… I’m not really sure about. But, I thought, if I went to study like you did, maybe they could tell me more?”

“Perhaps that would not be such a good idea.” Caleb doesn’t say more than that, apparently coming to a conclusion independent of Fjord. He gets up and paces over to a shelf, leaving Fjord to awkwardly trail behind him.

A small stack of books, not as complicated as the ones Caleb gathered on the table, about various forms of magic is placed into Fjord’s hands. Flipping open the first, he finds lists of chapters about wielders of magic, and the differences between them. Wizards, druids, bards, and others, with far less information on them.

Fjord’s eyes widen, fascinated, and a little terrified, by what he may find. He shakes his head, trying focus because this is important, this is, of course, a good thing, to learn about what he’s gotten himself into. 

**Learn** , an echo at the back of his mind. He swallows, irritated throat only adding to his paranoia, making the words on the page in front of him seem to spin. 

“Thank you, Caleb.” Fjord puts on a charming smile, the kind that always puts people at ease, makes them trust him and ignore the truth right in front of their eyes. 

Caleb just nods, giving Fjord one final look, incomprehensible.

…

Caleb has determined that Fjord is an idiot with as many secrets as him. There's so many signs that Fjord is content to pretend Caleb doesn't see: the apparent obliviousness about his own powers, the strange dreams that wake him up gasping and choking, the willful ignorance when it comes to actually putting together what is happening to him. 

He re-evaluates whether or not this whole partnership is a good idea very often, particularly when they’re doing things like running from a ball of flames and shadowy tentacles. Or, more accurately, when he’s slumped exhausted against a tree after his mind is clear of the rushing calculations of combat. 

It's already fairly odd for them to be attacked by such strange creatures, snakes or frogs or some mixture of both with slime and scales melding together into something toxic and rotting, but it's more odd to see Fjord switch from slashing through them with his falchion to going through the motions of spells that conjure blasts of darkness and writhing tendrils. Fjord hasn't looked him in the eyes since he cast those spells, but Caleb is no stranger to odd, or even dark, magic. He only worries that it may have attracted beings that'll make this little road trip harder than anticipated. 

He looks up to peer at Fjord, this mysterious man who holds so much power and has no idea what to do with it, but his eyes wander and he catches sight of the fire consuming their enemies behind him. They’re just out of range, but he imagines he can feel the heat, the searing, terrible heat of flames just tickling his skin. The abominations are too far away for them to see or hear but Caleb picks up what he thinks their dying screeches sound like, high pitched things that morph in his brain and memory to more human sounds. Screams, fire, his hands twitching with the release of magic. 

Everything cuts out. 

There’s an abrupt fade to white as he stands in nothingness, nowhere at all. He thinks he wants to go home and his subconscious complies, showing the smoldering wood of the building he’s destroyed. He can’t see bodies but he knows they’re there. He can’t smell anything but ash, and his lungs struggle with it, leaving him choking on smoke and his heart stuttering, skipping beats without the oxygen his blood craves. 

For a moment, it feels like there's needles stuck in all his nerves and then he goes numb, leaving his mind spiralling down in the void of an empty shell. Even with the rest his body seeming to shut down, his hands are warm, shaking with the thrill of power and then seizing with the cold grip of regret. There are thoughts warring in his mind, stubborn positivity and grim realization, battling for control of those hands. 

There’s a hand on his shoulder and he doesn’t want to turn around, doesn’t want to face His wrath, to see what more is in store for his training. 

“...out of it!”

Caleb's head snaps up, eyes suddenly seeing again. There’s a half orc... a half orc? 

Ah. Right.

Everything clicks back into place on the timeline, the balance sliding back to even. He’s on the road, with Fjord. 

“Sorry.” The phrase almost makes Caleb laugh, so underwhelming and so useless, a reflex and nothing more.

Fjord, usually so controlled and closed off, looks openly concerned and freaked out. Caleb wrenches away from his grasp on his shoulder, physically distancing himself from the situation. Fjord closes back up, lowering his hand and putting a neutral, pleasant look back on his face.

“It’s alright,” he drawls softly, as if soothing a child after a nightmare, “you good?”

“Ja.”

...

_We should talk._

Fjord’s got the beginning of a very important conversation echoing through his mind over and over again, going down the list of every possible way he could phrase his questions, editing and re-editing them, but they’re never quite right and he’s got the sinking feeling that he is not ready for whatever Caleb has to reveal. But it can’t be _that_ bad, right?

The bandit takes a swing at him so he stops thinking about Caleb and starts thinking about attack. His whole concentration has to be on this battle, they are outnumbered and overpowered. Battle strategies and evocations rush through his head, chasing each other and fighting to come to forefront of his mind. Thoughts of restraint and keeping up appearances are pushed aside, replaced by survival instinct and frustration. Gods, this fight could be over in seconds if he just- No, he should focus, no need to pull out all the stops right now, not with Caleb watching carefully just behind him. 

There's four people, they’re some kind of undead or reptilian or amphibian or all of the above, they’re armed with crossbows and swords, and they’ve got it out for him Caleb for gods only know what reason. They’re just random travelers but these… abominations, he supposes, attack with the fervor of men wronged, vengeance and fury powering them. The scales embedded in their skin and bones sticking through the rotted surface paint a confusing picture of what sort of being they could’ve possibly pissed off. 

Fjord doesn’t _think_ he’s wronged any cults of undead, to his, admittedly limited, knowledge. But he's never really sure, these days.

_Is this what’s going on with Caleb? Is Caleb running from a cult? Or-_

A crossbow bolt sinks into the junction where his collarbone and shoulder meet and it burns with what he assumes to be poison, but he’s more concerned about the cut off shout, behind him to his right. The last flare of fire on battlefield dies and Fjord doesn’t waste the time to look at Caleb lying prone away from the melee, down again with his too-light armor and too-frail body. Instead, he keeps his eyes forward, intent on the gathering of the bandits in front of them. There’s just two left, and they seem to have decided it would be better to brace against each other, forked tongues flicking out to sense the air and vertical pupils tracking Fjord’s movements, rather than be picked off with firebolts, like their friends in piles of ashes around them.

_A mistake._

Caleb is lying down in the cold mud of the road hoping he’ll stop bleeding soon, thankful he appears dead enough that everyone leaves him alone. Despite the pain, despite the threat of attack, despite his desire to just sleep, Caleb can’t help but open his eyes at the sound of… _gods what_ is _that?_

The bandits, or cultists, or zombies, or whatever they are have been replaced by what at first appears to be a sphere of pure darkness, but when he looks closer he can see it’s actually a mass of tangled, black tentacles woven into an imprecise but impenetrable bubble around their enemies. The sound, gods the _sound_ , is that of tentacles pushing and pulling against each other, sliding in a disturbing mix of rubber against rubber and the squelching of wet organic matter.

_Well, that’s not good._

He doesn’t even get to think about what he should do about that, because he’s being dragged along the ground by the back of his coat. He barely gets his feet under him, scrambling to keep up with the pace and keep his insides from spilling out simultaneously. Fjord is stronger than Caleb, but not by much, and he’s struggling to get Caleb to move, mouth twisted into a frown or a snarl and it strikes Caleb that it’s so odd he doesn’t have any tusks, what half-orc doesn’t have tusks? But the eyes, oh the _eyes_ , should’ve grabbed his attention first because they’re different and that’s _really not good_ , they’re yellow and the pupils are vertical, an alien creature in Fjord’s skull. His hand on Caleb’s back is warm with just released power, still thrumming through his veins, aching to be used more and more.

More and more until it’s not just the eyes that seem alien in Fjord.

There’s no time to unpack that as they run down the road, to anywhere at all away from the increasingly agitated, flailing ball of tentacles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What are friends for if not to save you from cultists by summoning tentacles from the ether?
> 
> I refuse to do spell research so I'm making this all up as I go along. Fjord can summon eldritch horrors if I want him to, dammit. I'm the god of this fanfiction.


	7. Rainy Day

**THE GALS**

They are _still_ on the road. It's cold and rainy and no one is sure when they’ll have shelter or real food again. 

This _sucks_. 

Well, it sucks for Nott, anyway. She's small, with an already limited supply of body heat, and the rags she wears, stolen and thrown together over weeks on the run, don't exactly do a lot for warmth, especially when they're soaked through with rain. 

Luckily, she’s not the only miserable one- Yasha’s frown has deepened, marginally, and even Jester looks like she's having a hard time smiling with the dark clouds hanging over their heads, threatening to ravage the smooth, open field the road they’re following cuts through. It must be tough for Jester in particular; she doesn’t look like she’s built to brave the elements on a regular basis, or even have to leave her home at all, if her expensive clothes and shiny jewelry are anything to judge by

Still, she grins down at Nott, keeping up the charade. 

"This isn't so bad. You should see storms by the coast! The whole _ocean_ rises up and crashes into the shore, and the wind knocks over buildings!" 

Nott shivers. She doesn't even want to _think_ about the ocean, the buckets of rain are scary enough, seeping into her mind and escaping down her throat with each breath of humid air. The wind picks up and pushes against them, propelling rain into their faces, into Nott’s mouth and lungs. It’s cold and filled with other debris, dirt and pieces of leaves swept up in the gust, like a current in a river. 

She digs her claw-like nails into her arms, trying to warm herself or ground herself, failing on both counts. Distracting herself, she glances up to Jester, hoping to see something that’ll cheer her up or inspire her or at least make her stop thinking about all the damn water. 

Jester doesn't shiver, doesn't seem cold at all, in fact. Which seems incredibly unfair, considering she's not even wearing that much more than Nott, only that once pretty, now ragged from days on the road, dress. Jester turns and notices Nott before she has too much time to be bitter about it, face immediately taken over with surprised worry- like a parent realizing they’ve lost track of their child. 

"Oh, Nott! You must be so cold, I didn't realize!" Even concerned, Jester is smiling, kind and just a little sheepish. "Here, take this."

Nott finds fabric being shoved into her hands before she processes what Jester is saying or finishes wondering how Jester picked up on her shivers. Jester's little shawl really shouldn't be much protection, but for Nott it may as well be a whole coat, the hood eclipses half of her face and the length dips down to her elbows. She pulls it closer around herself, grateful for the additional warm, if damp, layer. 

"Thank you, Jester."

"Of course! I never really think about the cold, you know, I have very warm blood." To demonstrate, Jester reaches down and presses a gentle hand against Nott's face. 

It's _warm_ , far warmer than should be normal. It reminds Nott of a fever, jumpstarting some long dormant instincts for a few seconds until she looks back up at Jester and the horns register again. 

"Are all tieflings so warm?" 

"Lots of them! But no, not all. As far as I know. But, I suppose I don't know a lot, besides my mom,” Jester looks thoughtful for a few seconds, her nose scrunching up as she concentrates, then jumps back to attention, asking, “What about goblins? Do you know lots of goblins?"

Nott wrinkles her nose. "Unfortunately."

"Oh, no, are they mean?" 

"Yes. They're _goblins_." 

"But _you're_ not mean." 

Nott’s bluntness only seems to confuse Jester, hatred contrasting with what’s right in front of her eyes. For Jester, it’s a paradox; Nott is a creature that should, by all accounts, be awful, but she’s Jester’s friend, so she can’t be all bad. 

A crack of lightning interrupts Nott's lack of response, striking the ground in front of them and burning a hole in the grass just a few feet away. The mood shifts, almost palpably, as they realize this is no longer a rainy, uncomfortable afternoon, but a dangerous, potentially life-threatening situation. 

Nott supposes she should be glad she's so small, she'll be the last to get hit out of any of them. Yasha is basically a tree, the tallest thing in their proximity, and Nott is sure she should be scared of the lightning but one glance at her face betrays a fierce _joy_ , distinct from the grumpy and neutral expressions they’ve enjoyed up to this point. 

"The storm is here. _Finally_." 

Yasha's face is turned upwards, eyes sparkling as they stare into the swirling storm clouds, spinning and spinning with Yasha at their center. Her grin is _vicious_ , glinting with the dim light of electricity wavering between the clouds. Her hands raise, palms open up to the storm, and the storm seems to _roar_ , though it might just be Nott's imagination. 

"Yasha? You ok?” Jester is not smiling anymore, hesitant to get too close to Yasha, with that wide, eerie smile on her face. 

Jester’s voice shakes like Nott’s clawed hands do, not from a chill but _dread_ as she looks at Yasha. Yasha, who looked so human, so normal, so miserable in the rain just a moment before. Yasha, with her eyes reflecting that too bright, destructive energy stretching across the sky. Yasha, silhouetted against the brief, violent flashes of light, a massive being standing tall in the face of the sky’s fury, breathing thunder, charged by the storm. Yasha, the awkward woman with the strange fashion choices, one with the storm, invigorated by this deadly force. 

The flashes pass, sky reclaimed by darkness, and Yasha seems to collapse back into the person they’re used to, no longer illuminated. But it’s not quite the same, she stands a little straighter, eyes cast a little higher into the storm above them. 

It’s a weird feeling to look at someone who should, as common sense dictates, be exactly the same as the moment before and see someone different. Stolen away and replaced by a simple lightning strike, now taking up more _space_ , somehow, like she’s someone dangerous or respected, someone who should be given generous elbowroom. Nott feels, ridiculously, like she should take a few steps back, as if Yasha is a ticking explosive or an uppity queen. 

“Yeah. Of course, it’s just. It’s just a little rain.” Her voice is different, monotone and forced. 

“A little? It’s a lot of fucking rain!”

Yasha looks back down at Nott like she’s noticing her for the first time, some shrill-voiced annoyance at her feet. Nott, in turn, squints up at her, trying to decipher, through the shadows, why she suddenly looks as if she has somewhere to be, a noticeable departure from her usual apathy. 

“We should find somewhere to take shelter!” Jester has to yell over the increasing din of pouring rain and constant thunder, looking between Nott and Yasha and then up at the dark sky. 

“Where the hell are we going to go? There’s nothing for ages!”

Jester frowns, doing a sweep of their surroundings and finding exactly what Nott did- empty, clear field with scattered, single trees, swaying dangerously in the growling winds. It’s a helpless situation, but Jester doesn’t give up, not like Nott has. Instead, she clasps her hands together and closes her eyes tightly, a determined expression creasing her rain soaked face. Her lips move silently, discreetly, as she mutters something under her breath, something neither Nott nor Yasha can hear. 

_“Traveler, be with us.”_

When Jester is done with her… prayer? Nott _swears_ she hears something. It sounds like a giggle, but it could just be the wind rushing past her ears, if not for the fleeting touch on her shoulder, a hand, large enough to be a presumptuous human. She whips around and sees nothing but the endless, muddy road. 

It doesn’t matter. Suddenly, nothing seems to, not the mysterious giggle, not the rain, not Yasha’s behavior. She almost laughs, seized by a bubbly happiness that replaces any other thoughts or feelings previously occupying her mind. Nott looks to Jester, trying to find some explanation for this feeling but Jester has her eyes on the road, face set in an unwavering, closed-minded ambition that Nott didn’t think her attention span was capable of producing. 

“We can do this. We push forward.”

Not daring to question this feeling, this feeling that begs not to be questioned but simply leaned into, or the confidence of this tiefling who calls herself a friend, Nott follows Jester, not noticing when Yasha slowly begins to lag behind, distractedly staring at the clouds. 

“We will reach shelter soon,” Jester smiles down at Nott, reassuring and so certain of her words, “I just know it.” 

Somehow, the words resonate. Somehow, this light feeling in her head and her chest makes it so easy to accept that Jester is telling the truth, that they’ll be fine. Somehow, Nott is sure, like Jester, that they will reach a town before they freeze to death or get struck by lightning or drown. 

She’s not sure if it’s magic or divinity or just _Jester_ , but Nott is prepared to accept any help if it means it’ll get her somewhere dry. Even if it means relying on a god or an imaginary friend. 

…

They won’t die. They can’t die, not with Jester here. 

No matter how cold, no matter how rainy. No matter how doubtful, no matter how suspicious. No matter how small, no matter how strong.

Even when the road turns to slick sludge and the air turns to water and the sky becomes their enemy, she’ll protect them. The _Traveler_ will protect them.

With a little bit of laughter and a little bit of confidence, they can persevere through any storm. Jester knows by experience. 

If she cries, a little or a lot, when she sees the first building on the horizon, nobody can tell through the rain coursing down her face. Nobody can tell through the tears of relief in their own eyes, thanking every god they know for the familiar, solid wood floor of a tavern and the warm, dry air circulating from the huge hearth at the corner of the room. 

_Thank you, Traveler._

…

She’s not sure what she’s meant to do. 

She has to go. 

She just _has_ to. 

But she looks at Jester’s happy little smile, lifting her new friends up. And she looks at Nott, begrudgingly relaxing in their company. Both of them sleeping in this shitty inn room that Jester managed to find them, the room Jester brought them to through the days of battering rain that threatened to weigh them all down and drown them. The rain that is still pelting the window, the rain accompanied by beats of thunder growing louder and louder. 

She can’t just leave them, can she? 

The storm rages and rumbles over her, as if goading, as if saying _are you giving up now? will you let this opportunity pass you by? what about your_ debt _?_

_What about_ her _?_

She shakes her head. Jester will understand, surely. 

She hopes her handwriting isn’t too bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gals are growing so much closer! They'll be best friends, together forever...right?


	8. Always By My Side

Beau is beginning to think she’s cursed, as dumb as that is. Despite her convictions about fate, or the lack thereof, it’s hard to deny that _something_ is happening, considering how everything seems to have gone wrong in the last few weeks. Beau is miserable, with finding several barrels of ale tainted and unusable, the expensive _“herbs”_ growing behind Molly’s shed dead and some of her emergency money under her bed either stolen or miscounted, but it can’t be anything more than coincidence. 

She doesn’t believe in curses or fate or fortune telling or whatever it is her mother is hooked on with those _stupid_ cards. She doesn’t believe, not like her mom and her dad who have always been obsessed with the concept of destiny, especially Beau’s destiny and how she seems determined to defy it. 

Beauregard Lionett was promised to the Lionetts, by the stars or some charming charlatan, as the perfect heir, the son to take over the highly respected brewery business that has been their livelihood for centuries. Delivered to them by the fates, foretold by the cards, the flawless businessman that her father always dreamed of. But Beauregard was not interested in her destiny, not from the first moment she emerged into the world. It was not long before her work was abandoned and she made friends in low, dark places. She has secrets that her parents do not yet know, secrets far beyond her obvious disgust for the family business. 

Her father is of the opinion that fate will keep its promises, no matter the cost. They named her what they had always planned to, gave her a childhood meant for another baby, another boy who would grow up to be an upstanding businessman. Her life was stolen from her and replaced with what it was meant to be. Her parents cling to their ideas, from denial or stubbornness, and they don’t care what she has to say about it.

So, Beau doesn’t say anything as she silently burns the Lionett empire to the ground from the inside.

It was only a matter of time before they smelled smoke. 

The second Beau sees the stack of ledgers on her father's desk, she knows the jig is up. Her father has long since abandoned trying to force Beau to perform her managerial duties as heir, so the only reason she would be called in to look at ledgers is that he's discovered her... well, her personal _"business"_. 

"You've been skimming off my supply."

"Straight to the point as always, dad, I like it." 

"You've been stealing from me for _years_." 

Mr. Lionett, a bitter old man with only a bare minimum of resemblance to Beau, moves around the desk to point an accusing finger at Beau, who remains still, long desensitized to his threats. She would almost say his eyes are sad, disappointed, but it's hard to look past the line of angry tension in his shoulders and his frown. 

"Yeah, I have. Made quite a bit of coin off of it too, maybe I do have the business instincts you always tried to teach me." 

Beau grins, arrogant and gloating, eager to watch the aftermath of the fire she’s left in her wake, in spite of the persistent sense of unease lurking in the back of her mind. She wants to enjoy this, ride the temporary high from seeing her father finally defeated, but her instincts say this isn’t over. She’s been living with his temper for too long to believe this will end well for her. 

Her father runs a tired hand over his face and uses the other for an offhanded wave, signaling the chaos to come. Everything from there happens very fast, faster than Beau’s untrained eyes and complacent attitude can follow properly.

The curtains are ripped from their rods with a clatter and furniture screeches across the floor, chairs teetering and falling on their sides. A hand reaches for her arm and Beau tries to elbow the accompanying face, only for her arm to be seized in a vice-like grip. Another hand grabs the collar of her shirt, a pair holds onto one of her shoulders, yanking her away from the blue-clad figure now looming in front of her. She squirms, wishing she'd taken the opportunity to learn to fight like Molly, but the assailants have trapped her in a strange triangle of unfailing strength. 

Her father turns his back on her struggle, just as he has done many times before. 

"These are the monks of the Cobalt Soul. They have assured me that you will be educated in the academics I have requested and that your... energy will be appropriately channeled. But most importantly, they have promised discipline and obedience. I will believe it when I see it."

Beau tugs against the grip of the monks, trying to angle herself into her father's vision, but he's staring straight ahead, through the now clear windows, surrounded by upturned furniture and heaps of fabric.

"You're sending your only child away?" Beau says it with a sort of finality, letting some glimmer of hope between them flicker out with the accusation. 

"You're not dying, I will see you again in a few years," his eyes slide to the side for a second, looking at Beau with not even the ounce of weakness she spotted earlier, "Hopefully, by then, you will want to see me too."

"Fat chance."

He grunts in begrudging acknowledgement. "Take her away."

"Wait!" Her heels dig somewhat childishly into the floor, but she doesn't care, she would've clawed at the nearest piece of furniture too, if her arms hadn’t been restrained in every capacity. 

Mr. Lionett turns around to face her for what will be the last time in many years. His face does not betray any hope, or any emotion at all in preemptive reaction to what she will say. She wonders briefly if he feels anything when he looks at her anymore, anything besides tired anger, or if he's given up on her. She hopes it's the latter, so she can finally be free from his stare.

"How'd you figure it out?" 

"Simple mathematics, the supply numbers weren't adding up-"

"If it was so simple, why'd it take you fucking years to find the mistake?"

He shakes his head, looking like he might get mad again, but smiles instead. A cruel, mocking smile, one Beau has seen many times on her father's face.

"One of your friends is a snitch."

The tension her body produced to fight the monks goes slack in surprise and the monks take the opportunity to unceremoniously drag Beau out of her father’s office, through her empty dining room and living room, where her mother is conspicuously absent. 

She’s dumped into a waiting cart, covered for privacy and guarded by two monks sitting at its edge. The open back of the wagon shows the familiar sights of Kamordah falling away, replaced by empty countryside, shaking with the fast pace of the horses and blurring as Beau’s tears refuse to fall. When she can no longer see the town sign it really sinks it that _this is happening_ , that she’s really being taken away from her home at her father’s request. 

There’s plenty of time to think among the pile of her haphazardly gathered belongings that have clearly been packed by her father, judging by the sheer magnitude of formal things she doesn't care about and glaring lack of anything she holds truly dear. Time to think about being kidnapped, about living with monks, about abandoning her life as she knows it. About who ratted her out. 

Her mind stutters on the mention of friends- she thinks first of Molly, poor Molly, that bastard is all alone without her. She doesn't doubt he could make friends on his own, but she doesn't want to imagine how he'll feel when he can't find Beau tomorrow morning or the next or the next. 

But a snitch? Couldn't be Molly, of course. She hangs out with so many shady rats that it could be _anybody_ looking to spite her. That guy last week with the bad haircut or the girl with the poorly cut diamond ring. 

It's there, amongst the musty smell of cart funk that she remembers. The snakes in the barrel room last week, the snake-skins hanging from the shed days ago, the scales on her bedroom floor last night. 

That damn snake Tracy. 

...

Mollymauk does not tolerate loneliness.

When Beau doesn't show up at this little hovel he calls his home at the usual time they meet in the mornings, he only waits a few minutes to ditch her and go somewhere with a high population of lonely people to amuse himself with— a bar. She's probably just busy with a "customer" anyway, he can catch her up on what sort of trouble he's gotten into later. 

The most popular tavern in this tiny little town, the Crass Sailor, is familiar to Molly; it's the site of his many bored misadventures and his acquiring of brief, but immensely entertaining, acquaintances. Today, it’s the same as it’s always been, populated by sad day drinkers who could use the bit of the imitated charm Molly has to offer. He's silently sat in on enough illegal and manipulative deals to know how to charm people into giving him what he wants, even if he's not looking to get anything more than a fun day from them.

His patchwork orange and yellow sleeveless coat swishes behind him, the stolen jewelry and trinkets woven into his hair and around his horns tinkle softly, and his grin speaks loudly to the patrons, announcing his presence with little effort on his part. He suspects his outfit looks like it was made by a child who’s bad at making decisions, greedily throwing together everything he had as opposed to sticking to a consistent scheme. As it is, everything he’s wearing is stolen and remixed in some way, from the banner to the jewelry, but nobody in the bar needs to know that, particularly if they are the previous owners of some of his accessories. 

The look is all part of the appeal, making it near impossible for people to resist their curiosity, especially if the people in question don’t have anything better to be doing. It's good to make an impression, wipe away any doubts a stranger could have and replace them with intrigue. It's even better to give people what they want, whether that is a necessary distraction in a miserable bar or a criminal that looks just as rebellious as their associates wish they could be. 

Molly plops himself down next to the gloomiest guy in the room, getting to work right away. It only takes a couple of hours of talking, of lying about a life much more extensive and interesting than his own, to coerce the man away from the bar and out on the town. Molly is being bought lunch before he knows it and the man is having a great time not thinking about his troubles at home. It's a give-take, a business deal skewed in his favor. Everyone gets something they want and everyone lies to each other to get it. 

Happy with his bounty of a decent meal, company and a day spent masquerading as a travelling performer from the Menagerie Coast, Molly heads back to sleep in the makeshift hammock he and Beau have strung between the sagging structural supports of the shed Molly sleeps in. 

Beau doesn't show up the next day.

One day, he could perhaps excuse, but two days? Grounds for immediate confrontation. He's more worried than irritated though, Beau is usually pretty upfront about her plans and would rather pick a fight than be passive aggressive about anything Molly might've done. Molly will follow her lead and do just that— pick a fight to get what he needs. 

It takes _hours_ to stake out all the spots Beau tends to loiter and he has to brush off several delinquents who recognize him as Beau's right-hand man. He hisses and bares his fangs at one of them, utilizing that nasty reputation of his, which he thinks was very restrained, taking his terrible mood into consideration. 

It's dark and Molly is hungry from a day spent searching, rather than mooching off of new “friends” and “friendly” criminals, when he arrives at Beau's house. He's gotten absolutely no information from her criminal network, what remnants are lingering in town at the moment, as Beau has apparently been missing in action on the scene. That can only mean one thing. 

Molly pulls on a smile, which he knows from experience it's too sharp and wide but he doesn't have anything better to offer at the moment. He realizes he probably should've made himself more presentable, maybe left out some of the shit in his hair or turned his coat around, but he's exhausted and irritable and he just wants to find Beau. 

Beau's father, or who Molly assumes to be her father based on the stifling air of superiority and the deep-set evil in his bone structure, opens the door with a scowl at the sight of Molly. He's grown accustomed to this reaction, nobody likes a purple devil to show up on their doorstep, much less one that looks like he's dressed in a wide spectrum of stolen clothing, pieced together with no apparent sense of style. 

"Can I help you?" It sounds more like he meant to say "go away", but that won't deter Molly. 

"Yes, sir! You certainly can! You see, I'm looking for a woman, by the name of Beauregard, she recommended your family's bourbon at the tavern, excellent beverage by the way, so well crafted, like the ichor of the gods-"

"Please, just get to the point. My wife and I are in the middle of dinner."

"Oh absolutely, of course! See, me and Beauregard, lovely lady, excellent young woman you've raised-" he cuts himself off at Mr. Lionett's eye roll, suppresses a snicker and makes a note to speed this along, before the man’s patience runs out, "Ah, well, we had a wonderful chat over your alcohol and she was fantastic help in advising me about my startup business and I just have to thank her! Do you know where she is? I figured she might be at the estate, but I suppose such an important lady may have other places to be-"

"Did Beau put you up to this?" 

Molly's eyebrows draw together in an exceedingly dramatic fashion, just as exaggerated as his excitable entrepreneur character. "In a sense, I suppose? I'm not sure what you're asking, sir."

Beau's father, as is typical of the long suffering and nasty old man, ceases to look exasperated and turns to anger instead, putting on a truly fearsome expression. Molly can only imagine that face across the dinner table every night, objecting to his very existence. The sharp wrinkles, the over-groomed eyebrows and the icy blue eyes all come together to create a terrifying monster. 

"She's been sent away to a monastery. You'll have to find a new dealer."

"Dealer? What-" 

Molly grabs the door as Mr. Lionett tries to slam it. His fingers are nearly crushed in the attempt but he grins a convincingly demented smile at the man, who recoils as much as he can while still keeping hold of the door. Mr. Lionett seems to realize he’s much closer to the tiefling than he intended to be and Molly takes advantage by leaning in further, almost inside the home now. Molly is grateful, for the first time, that he’s always been better at eliciting fear than cooperation, so he can get to see Beau’s bastard of father nearly piss himself. 

"Wait! Tell me, at least, which monastery she'll be studying at? I was hoping to keep correspondence, my business is just starting and without proper guidance-"

"Cobalt Soul," Mr. Lionett’s face pales but the sneer stays, determined to maintain his authority, even while being terrified of Molly, “Leave my property. Now.”

Molly does not need to be asked twice. 

...

 _This is so stupid._

Beau can't believe she’s been sent to live with monks, the world’s most badass martial artists, and she’s stuck in a fucking _library_. 

So. Much. Studying. 

Constant lessons in history and religion. Zeenoth is breathing down her neck at every second of the day, convinced that she’s no more than a troubled student in need of guidance, that with enough work and determination she will love studying and give up on her mission to annoy him as much as possible.

Beau, on the other hand, is convinced that if she stops kicking for even a second she’ll succumb to the studious disease and become one of the mindless zombies of the library, nerds consumed in words on a page, not even understanding what they mean, just what they _say_. It’s a useless practice and she refuses to let her asshole father see her fulfill her “destiny”. 

Destiny. That damn word is all throughout their history books, gods and men fighting to discover and control it. Idiots, every one of them.

“If they just opened their damn eyes, maybe they would see that they could just _do something_ to change their ‘destiny’.” 

Zeenoth with his infuriatingly smug and condescending face, _gods_ he thinks he knows everything just because he’s well-read, grins down at Beau. His eyes glint with the quiet malice she’s learned to associate with educated people who think they know better than her, like her father and every tutor she’s ever driven away. 

“Well, Beauregard, it’s not really that simple, is it? For example: you,” he points a thin, well-manicured finger at her scowling, slumped form, “have no way of controlling your destiny at the moment. You’re locked in this library and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now, if you’d known this would have happened, perhaps you might’ve chosen the path of less resistance, even prepared for the inevitability.”

Beau slams her hands down on the desk and stands, moving around the desk in front of Zeenoth to assert herself in a clearly empty threat, but Zeenoth gets nervous anyway and takes a step back, recognizing Beau as much taller and visibly stronger than him. And crazy, if her father’s stories are to be believed.

Crazy and irrationally rebellious but maybe not stupid enough to attack an archivist in a library likely packed with back up. She doesn't even shove him as she pushes past, back into the stacks of books he's lined up for her, hiding by shelves for a minute to stew in peace. 

She thinks of the places she wants to go when she gets out of here, thinks of the trouble she could get into. She thinks of Molly and how she wishes she could've at least told him where she was going, how she wishes she could still be there to help him get everything he deserves of his second life. She thinks of history and the pointless knowledge she's accumulating with every turn of a page. She thinks of Ioun and her symbols all around this place and her symbol tucked in her coat and of contradicting beliefs that give her a headache. She thinks that reading is exceptionally boring. 

The fighting is what makes her realize the potential of it all. 

A monk fight is not the chaotic brawling of street scuffles or back alley ambushes, but organized movement, efficiently executed moves, and purposeful strikes intended to take down an enemy in the least amount of time possible. With only your fists. 

Which is pretty badass. 

_Too slow. Unbalanced. Guard your left side. Your right. Faster._

_Faster._

_Faster._

Everything she learns here she uses in the next moment, memorizing every weak point and every move with the diligence Zeenoth uses to memorize the histories of entire civilizations. The learning process is not so unbearable here, where the knowledge burns through her with the strain of her muscles and the impact of her fists on flesh. 

She imagines all those engraved eyes, symbols of Ioun, staring down with approval as Beau _learns_ , catching on fast to an art that should take years. Learning, eating up useful information like a vital nutrient she’s been deprived of for years, something she’s always been searching for, though never consciously. 

It’s not long before this training is done and she’s banished back to the library for a purpose that is never explained, never justified, never useful. She’s expected to trust these people and to trust her destiny, to trust that they know what she is meant to do, to trust in the world’s plans for her. To trust without knowing what she’s trusting in or if it even exists at all. 

Beau does not trust the uniformed strangers of the library or her dad’s empty words or the invisible, flimsy threads of the universe. Beau trusts things she can see and things she can test. Beau trusts her fists, with her own power behind them, she trusts her decisions, with her own logic supporting them, and she trusts Molly, the friend she helped build up from the grave. 

Beau will carve her own design into the stonework of her life, piece by piece with no picture to complete and no expectations, just a sharp determination to get what she wants. Soon, she will take hold of the reigns as every person should and weave her own “destiny”, whatever that means. Whether that means escape, throwing a riot, or biding her time, doesn’t matter. All she cares about is the result. 

Settling down in her room like a good student and putting aside her books in a legitimate effort to get rest for training tomorrow is all part of her new plan, the first she’s had in a long time. 

And, like many of her previous plans, it immediately falls apart with the sound of a shattering window, and the appearance of a delighted magenta tiefling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you just hate it when your dad sends you off to basically military school for stealing copious amounts of alcohol and reselling it? Parents, amirite? 
> 
> Sorry for getting this out so late, I just got back to school from spring break and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I made this one a little longer to make up for it, extending it, conveniently, to a bit of a cliffhanger ending. 
> 
> Also, for the people who caught it, yes, the bar name is ripped from Sam's one shot. Partially for the reference and partially because I couldn't be bothered to come up with a bar name.


	9. Trust Issues

**NOTT AND JESTER**

It hurts, of course, to see the note. But Jester has never been one to show she’s hurting, especially not when it’s so important to keep spirits up. 

The room they’ve rented is warm and dry, shielded from the elements and filled with heat from the fireplace, thank the gods. Thank the _Traveler_ , for his blessing that got them through the stormy days by putting laughter in their hearts and cutting loose their pain, like weights tied to their ankles. Jester is grateful to be alive and out of the rain but... she’s not sure it’s enough, just to have this room without Yasha in it. 

It’s just her and Nott now, bed noticeably emptier, hearts noticeably lonelier. Not that she thinks Nott will admit to Yasha’s exit affecting her at all, regarding it as abandonment by a mere stranger. A mere stranger that walked through a near hurricane with her, extending her coat over her head, for what little good it did. A mere stranger that lifted her onto her shoulders when the road became too muddy and slick for those bare, clawed toes. A mere stranger that kept watch with them every miserable night on that road, pulling both of them into an embrace to stifle some of the shivering. 

No, she won’t admit it but Jester knows better than anyone that the things that are never spoken aloud are the ones that hurt the most. 

“Where’s Yasha?” Nott’s sleepy head pokes its way out from the frayed sheets of the bed they all shared, noting the distinct lack of a person squeezing in on the other side of her. 

“She…left. Said she had something important to do.” 

Nott’s expressive eyes widen at the sight of a sad Jester with a crumpled letter in her hands, then narrow again, determined to keep that unnatural, neutral expression she insists on. She moves towards Jester, then hesitates until Jester scoots closer, allowing Nott to bridge the final gap, seemingly taking Jester’s movement as permission. 

Nott’s clawed hands settle gently on her forearm and soft, big ears brush her upper arm as Nott’s head comes to a rest against her arm. The position is a mimicry of the tenuous cuddle they shared on that first night, easier now with the practice they got sharing essential body warmth on the nights they thought the rain would freeze their very bones. 

“It’s ok, Jester. Maybe we’ll see her again?” Nott does not believe that, not even for a second, and she is a terrible liar, but she is kind to try. 

“The note says she’ll find us.” Jester is not an idiot, she knows when people are lying to her. But it won’t do anyone any good to show her doubt now, so she smiles at Nott, like a child promised a puppy. 

“Oh, even better then. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” 

Nott has this pained little smile, with something behind it that Jester can’t quite see. Jester knows people, it’s in her nature, inherited from her mother. But there's only so far she can go on intuition without the practical experience to reach a real conclusion. It's _frustrating_ to fail at deciphering the facial expressions of people she barely knows but _feels_ like she should. 

Putting that aside, Jester claps her hands together, ushering in a new topic, moving on from the sadness as quickly as she can and hoping the speed will make her forget, distract her for long enough to… she’s not sure. Move onto the next thing, whatever that may be. 

“It _will_ be fine! Do you know why?” Jester does not pause for Nott’s slightly terrified expression, anticipating shenanigans, she already knows Jester so well, “Because me and you are going to be an _amazing_ team. We’ll go out into town and do whatever we want! We can pull pranks, or be heroes, or some of both! Prankster heroes-“ 

“Jester,” Nott squeezes her arm just firmly enough to grab her attention, “I can’t.”

“What do you mean? Why not?” Jester doesn't react fast enough to dim the hysterical edge to her voice, some dam inside of her flooding and filling her mind with _terror_ , terror that Nott is leaving her too. Terror at the possibility of facing this world all alone, again. 

Nott shakes her head a little, just like Jester’s mom would when Jester would ask silly questions or say something a little too optimistic for this terrible world. “I’m a goblin, Jester. I can’t just go running around town doing what I please. I’ve only gotten a pass so far because of the cloak and the chaos of the storm but, well, I don’t want to try my luck.”

Just as soon and completely as the terror filled her, relief rushes in to take it's place. _Finally_ something she can fix, something with a solution, something not as finicky as the emotions of strangers. Unexpectedly, or maybe totally predictably, Jester’s face breaks into a grin, though not like the ones Nott has seen before. No, not the strictly cheerful or strictly hopeful ones, or even the determined one of the storm, this smile is filled with possibilities, plans, and, perhaps most of all, mischief.

“Oh, we can fix that!” Jester says it like she’s managed to solve conflicting lunch plans, like she’s found some minor detail Nott’s overlooked, like it’s actually a very simple problem and not all devastating. 

Nott is visibly unsure about this "fix", but Jester doesn't mind her skepticism, as long as she trusts her enough to stick around and find out what she has in mind. 

“And how can we do that?”

Jester’s mischievous smile curves up almost cartoonishly, forcing her fangs to poke out over her lower lip, glinting in the light that catches the lightest blue parts of her eyes, sparkling like stolen sapphires. 

“A makeover, of course!”

…

Nott isn’t quite sure what she did to deserve being stuck in this situation. 

Well, she supposes she isn’t _stuck_ , not really. She knows, rationally, that she could just sneak away; Jester is so easily distracted it wouldn’t be difficult to just disappear and leave her to her own devices. She could even leave a note, like Yasha, letting empty promises fill the space she’s left behind. 

But Jester looks so happy digging through the junk of the scrapyard on the outskirts of town, such a drastic change from the deflated girl sitting on the bed this morning, looking mournfully at the last correspondence with a stranger who was, somehow, one of her greatest friends. Digging through the junk of a scrapyard, her best approximation of "shopping" for a new look for Nott with not a coin to her name. Nott couldn't stand the thought of making her sad like Yasha did, not when she's doing her best to help Nott with the limited resources she has. 

Nott will stay, stay and dig through the junk with Jester, because she _did_ do something to deserve this, she’s doing something right now. She’s not there for them, because she can’t be, maybe selfishly or maybe selflessly. They don’t deserve her and she doesn’t deserve them, or Jester or the kindness she’s being shown. 

She’ll always be paying for being a goblin, no matter how _unfair_ it is. She’ll never escape what she is, no matter how much she _hates_ it. She’s trapped in this body, with these teeth and these ears and these claws and these eyes that make people so scared and angry. She’s stuck with herself multiplied by ten, everything she was always meant to be. 

Even a mask will not help, it will not make her different and it will not hide her in any way that matters. 

That is if she even manages to find a mask in this pile of garbage, random bits of broken things the town decided it didn’t want, forming a pile that’s surely grown over the years, a beast at the edge of a town, a monument to waste and rot. There’s gross things- ancient food and corpses of pests- boring things- splintered farm tools and shattered vials- and sad things- bundles of stained formal wear and worn down, overly loved toys. 

Among them is a doll, old and out of style, abused to an unsettling degree. It’s been stripped of its dress, likely repurposed before the doll was discarded, leaving the lumpy sack of stuffing that forms its body bare to the world. Exposed to the dangers of the scrapyard that tore away its arm and leg, splitting it open to be ravaged by desperate rats tearing out its stained white insides until they gave up on finding any sustenance there. 

It probably hit the ground face first, judging by the spider web of cracks spreading over the pale porcelain, splitting the faded red lips vertically. Its hair is little more than a lump of sticky fuzz adhered to the smooth surface of its skull. It stares up at Nott with one good eye and one that’s been reduced to shards of plastic embedded in the empty socket, she would describe it as looking sad if it wasn’t so clearly sucked of any life it may have had, bled out onto the lump of soiled parchment beneath it. 

Maybe someone once found this doll beautiful, maybe it was once the joy of someone’s life; a thing they spent time and energy on dressing in all the best little outfits, positioning it _just so_ in a display case. Maybe someone once loved it, but Nott thinks it was always ugly, the lips too pursed, the body too uneven, the arms stunted, the hair, underneath all the grime, an oversaturated yellow. Always weird, always out of place, always a little creepy, always- always-

Always _not_ pretty. 

There’s a deep cut on its face over the bridge of its nose, not quite extending to either side but getting close. She supposes if it were to split along that line it’d make a decent mask, as long as everyone she encounters is blind. Nott forces her nails into the gap, the eyes stare at her but they’re dead, _dead_ , trapped in a body so broken that even the person who loved them threw away. 

She pulls and the whole face falls into pieces, cracking along the fainter lines. The half of the face she hoped to salvage falls into three pieces on her hands, jagged lines separating each of them. Behind the pulled apart mask is a hollow space, the doll’s head empty of mind or soul, now only a chamber that’ll catch some tiny amount of rain water for rats. Near useless, even to the lowest beasts. 

“Oh! What have you found, Nott?” Jester leans over her curiously, smiling even at the morbid sight of the shattered doll's face

Nott hands it over to Jester. She doesn’t really want to look at it anymore. 

“It’s so pretty, don’t you think?”

Jester has a very odd definition of pretty if she thinks that a cracked, creepy doll face is “pretty”. 

“It’s all cracked.” 

Nott’s pointing out the obvious but sometimes she’s not so sure Jester is getting the obvious, ignoring dismal reality in favor of whatever dreams she has living in her head. There’s a whole other world up there, where gods are funny pen pals, goblins are cute, people don’t stare, and broken dolls are _pretty_. 

“Oh, that’s not a problem!” Jester holds the pieces of the mask delicately and runs her fingers over it, tracing the fragile edges she’s pushed together, trailing a slight green glow as she goes. Everywhere she touches, the mask mends and stitches itself together, colors brightening and edges smoothing. A proper, pretty, if a little creepy, mask. 

“What do you think? Will this work? At least until we can buy you a better one?” Jester lies down and leans forward on her elbows, paying no attention to filth beneath her as her legs kick in the air and she grins at Nott. 

Nott tries her best to turn her grimace in something that could pass for a grin. Jester shakes her head, letting her skeptical expression shine. 

“Why don’t you try it?” Jester plucks a ribbon from her dress, letting the sleeve fall limply with its absence, and fastens it to the mask, a makeshift solution. Slowly, giving Nott ample opportunity to stop her at any time, she ties it around Nott’s head and sits up to look at her, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. 

She squints and uses her hands as frames, looking at Nott from different angles, before sighing softly. “It’s not as pretty as your normal face, but you said you needed a mask, so I think this is the best we’ve seen so far.”

“You don’t mean that.” It’s not a question, not a debate. It’s a statement, an accusation, calling Jester’s out a lie. 

“Of course I mean it! Oh, Nott,” Jester motions her forward, urging her to come and sit with her, and Nott can’t help but at least settle against her knee, “You are _so_ pretty! I love your eyes best, I think. I’ve never seen anybody with eyes that could say so much, so much more than a smile or words even, and they _glow_ , I mean how cool is that? I could talk to you all day about your eyes and your face, but... I don’t know if that’ll help you.”

"I think," Jester is whispering now despite them being the only people around, as if sharing a secret with a dear friend, "That one day you'll have to find your own mask, one that reveals, instead of hides. And you'll have to find a pretty little dress, or maybe a pretty little suit, and some sparkly jewelry and flowers! Everybody loves flowers, they make everyone feel a little better, a little more beautiful." 

Nott wants to look down, wants to run and hide and disappear from Jester and her kind words, but she can’t in the same way she feels she can’t leave Jester and her smile. Jester’s smile, with those teeth that should strike fear, teeth that she uses to spread joy in the same way she dresses up her horns and her pointed nails to fit her cute persona, bending her body to her personality. 

Jester should be just as scary as Nott but she isn’t. She can’t be, with the way she holds herself confidently and playfully, with the way she speaks to others and makes them feel better. 

_Could I ever be like that?_

There’s only one way to find out. 

“Thank you, Jester,” Nott takes her hand as they move to stand, claws nestled in claws, “I think you’re pretty, too.”

...

_The smashed in face of a doll head, empty with jagged edges, leans over her, peering through the water. Water, so much water, rushing faster and faster, past her face and into her mouth. The bubbles she releases float up and to the side, never obscuring the doll head. The river water is filled with sludge and garbage, no longer the clean, clear haven from her childhood, now it flows with broken pieces of unwanted things._

_A button lodges in her throat and the water is laughing, cruel laughter of snobby boys and tormenting brothers. Her heartbeats ring in her ears, warped with the sound of the rushing water and boyish laughter overlaid, becoming a shrill ringing and then a cackling war cry. Hoarse throats screaming for blood and revenge._

Nott opens her eyes, blinking away the images of the nightmare and trading its sounds for the quiet of the inn room. She stares up at the ceiling, hoping this’ll be a good night and she’ll be able to fall asleep again. Already the dream is fading from her memory and she doesn’t bother to hang onto the disparate pieces, letting them fall away into the growing void of forgetfulness in her chest. 

Jester is breathing deeply in sleep beside her. The cold night air is seeping through the poorly constructed walls, severely splintered and filled with gaps. The atmosphere is peaceful, undisturbed by her sudden awakening.

Nott breathes now, savoring the clean air, no humidity here. No rain today, so air comes and goes without strain, without the memory of thick, disgusting water.

Beside her, Jester's breathing starts to sound a little funny, too fast, maybe, or just uneven. Maybe she's woken up.

No, Nott's brain slowly warms up to awareness and recognizes Jester shifting, turning to face Nott in her sleep with a scowl on her unconscious face. Nott is moving before she even thinks to do anything, shaking Jester to try and wake her, anything to remove that pained expression from her face. 

"Hey, hey, Jes."

Jester awakes with just a touch of her shoulder, eyes flying open and landing on Nott.

"Oh. Nott."

"You looked like you were having a nightmare so I woke you, uh," Nott stalls at the weird look on Jester's face, caught somewhere between her nightmare's distress and disappointment, "Are you ok?"

"Oh!" Jester's face straightens without warning, summoning an easy smile that doesn't seem so easy anymore, now that Nott’s seen the stiff transformation, "I'm fine!"

"Are you sure?"

Jester bites her lip, considering, and then offers a sad smile. "You sound like my mom, Nott."

Before Nott can even blush, Jester continues, sitting up and tucking her knees to her chest. "I just miss home, I think. I dreamed my mom was in trouble, getting attacked by a Kraken, which I know sounds ridiculous but..."

Nott’s heart aches looking at Jester’s face so scared and vulnerable in these dark hours. Before, she thought Jester’s face seemed so honest, so easy to read, but now she sees how much Jester has truly been holding back. Her first instinct is to protect Jester, from her nightmares and her fears, and Nott's instincts, in these last few months, are becoming the only philosophy she operates on anymore. 

"It's not ridiculous. It's your mom; you have the right to be worried. But," Nott sits beside Jester, tucking her legs to her chest to mimic her pose, "From what I’ve heard your mother is very capable, so I think she can handle herself, right?"

"Of course! She's very strong and has lots of fans, you know. Everyone is sort of in _love_ with her."

“Is that so? Then I’m sure she could handle a silly old Kraken, I mean you live on the beach, aquatic monsters must be child’s play for her.”

“Definitely! I mean I had to have gotten this amazing strength from somewhere,” Jester flexes her muscles, which are in fact much more defined than seems probable for someone like Jester, “And the Kraken won’t even be able to get to her, in her fancy room on the top floor, she’d watch it flounder on the beach from her balcony!”

“Sounds like she’ll watch the town slay it for her, since she's so lovely and charming.” Nott is making this up as she goes along, but Jester doesn’t need much to get her started.

“Yes, yes! There’s like an army of people lined up to see her, I’m sure they’d kill to get a chance with the Ruby of the Sea! Oh, Nott have I ever told you about—“ 

_This is going to go on for a while._

But Nott doesn't mind. For Jester, for her friend, Nott is willing to listen to her talk about her mom to her heart's content, if that makes her happy. She'll be here for Jester, if she can't be there for someone else. She’ll assuage Jester’s fears about her mom, if she can’t reassure someone else out there, yearning for their mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is: The Gals, minus one. 
> 
> I had to edit _a lot_ of this chapter, since its first draft was written before Nott’s backstory reveal. It's very late and I'm sleepy, but it's done!


	10. Drowning In Flames

**FJORD AND CALEB**

Caleb is an expert at calculated risks; his whole life has been a series of calculated risks, some supported by solid math and others by more questionable estimations. When he signed up to travel an unspecified distance for an unspecified amount of time with a total stranger, he figured it would be worth it for the temporary protection he could provide. When he discovered his new companion had some very _interesting_ secrets, he figured it would make him less likely to ask about Caleb’s secrets. All of it a deliberate ploy for safety, up until the tentacles and the cultists. 

Of course, Caleb doesn’t know _exactly_ why they were chased down by undead cultists on the road to some podunk town in the middle of nowhere, it's certainly _possible_ that they could have just been unlucky enough to get in their way, but he’d wager a bet that it has something to do with the fact that Fjord can summon tentacles to do his bidding. 

And so, it is a calculated risk when he sits down to talk to Fjord. 

“We should talk. About the, uh… cultists, ja?” 

Caleb looks Fjord in the eyes, adjusting his ragged, muddy coat as if it’s the uniform he was so accustomed to, as if it will give him the power he once held, as if he could put on the confidence of a young fool like a simple cloak. It works, to an extent, and he sees Fjord straighten into his own snake-charming posture, arming himself with an easy smile on the battlefield of charm, where he and Caleb are near equals. 

Caleb thinks he does pretty well ignoring that nauseous, squirming feeling in his stomach, pretending he’s simply out of practice with this sort of thing rather than trying desperately, _desperately_ to hold off the memories of when he was the best at making polite conversation with powerful people, better even than Fjord. 

“I agree. We should address this threat, so we can move around more safely. Wouldn’t want any more ambushes like yesterday.” 

“Of course.” 

Fjord and his diplomacy, trying to convince Caleb to give up the lie and admit his wrongdoing because they want that the same thing, don’t they? The only sign of suspicion, the only break in this friendly, helpful persona, is his slightly narrowed eyes, the light pressure of Fjord trying to see through Caleb's story, or lack thereof. 

They both lapse into the silence of thoughts between moves, chess players looking at wildly different boards, moving unseen pawns with every word. 

“I think you should tell me the truth, Caleb.” Fjord’s hand moves to his side, resting on the empty scabbard as if he even needed such a move to summon that cursed thing. 

How lovely, a deliberate, almost theatrical threat. He is naïve, more so than Caleb first believed, to stoop to such levels and think he could win. 

“No, Fjord. I think _you_ should tell _me_ the truth, _friend_.” 

Caleb leans forward across the table, words and hands thrumming with precisely calculated power. Power he’s worked for years to understand the ins and outs of, power he knows as well as his native tongue, power he’s earned through fire and blood. 

His eyes take on a possessed light, dulled blues becoming vibrant with something that is beyond Fjord, magic he could wield but _never_ truly understand. Fjord’s eyes flash with the same blue light, revealing magic stealing into his mind through careful, cajoling words, the quiet ease of Caleb’s will replacing his own, if for just a moment. 

A dopey grin spreads across Fjord’s face, relaxed in the presence of his trusted _friend_. 

“Of course, Caleb, whatever you want to know.” 

“Do you have anything to do with the cultists?” To the point, before his minute is up. 

Fjord looks thoughtful, eager to give a complete answer to his _friend_. “I don’t believe so. Not by any intentional means, anyway.” 

“And the unintentional means?” 

At this, Fjord shifts, question giving him pause. Caleb worries that perhaps he’s pushed too far, that Fjord’s indecision will eat away all chances of his gamble going through, but Fjord’s face relaxes again. He is in company of a close _friend_ , what does he have to fear when telling the truth? 

“I’m afraid I’m mixed up in some magic business I don’t entirely understand. I’ve been meaning to tell you, to ask you about it, but, well, it’s a rather long story. The shipwreck and the dreams and the sword, it’s all been… a lot, but I don’t think it’s causing this trouble,” Fjord pauses, eyebrows furrowed as he watches Caleb, “Hey, what are you-“ 

Caleb stopped listening halfway through, confirming his hypothesis about the means by which Fjord acquired his magic and choosing to focus on the more urgent matter of backing away from Fjord. His eyes rove the room, scanning for the easy exit, the best defense, trying to summon any better plan for the conflict to come. 

The end of the spell hits Fjord a bit sooner and harder than Caleb expects, charms being an imperfect science, affecting everyone a little different. 

A splash of cold seawater strikes Caleb like blow and he only has time to think _He moves_ very _fast_ before he’s shoved himself against the flimsy wall of the inn, leaning away from the falchion and, impossibly more threatening, Fjord’s glare. 

“The fuck did you just do to me?” 

“I needed the truth, Fjord.” Caleb doesn’t move or shake, disciplined in his efforts to subdue all signs of nerves or fear, knowing too well the consequences of revealing a vulnerability. 

“So you _charmed_ me? Decided to fuck with me head to get what you wanted?” Fjord is a man scorned, anger flaring in his eyes like an uncontrolled wildfire, an irrational fury at the illusion coming apart, at some imagined trust unravelling before him. 

“It is not all that worse than a physical threat, don’t you think?” Caleb winces at his own words, knowing that talking back, that challenging the man holding the power, is not a good idea, a risk not calculated, a risk not considered. 

It only takes a moment for Caleb's mind to run through the possibilities- a large amount of them ending in Caleb with his throat slashed open, bleeding on the floor of the inn room, and Fjord standing over him, seething. He thinks, uselessly in this moment, of what he would've done differently, what he would've changed if he'd gotten a hold of those threads of fate sooner. He could've bailed out the first night, or the first town, or after the cultist attack, but he kept coming back. _Why?_

But Fjord, always surprising Caleb, steps away. He hesitates for just a moment, anger deflating as suddenly as it appeared. An almost abashed look crosses his face. 

“You're right,” he clears his throat, straightening as if nothing had happened, as if they were still having a pleasant discussion and nobody had been charmed or threatened at sword-point, “I shouldn’t have taken it that far.” 

Sincere and genuine, for all intents and purposes. Fjord, the negotiator and face man of their strange duo, charming shopkeeps, the crownsguard, and scared wizards all across Exandria. 

“Likewise. I shouldn’t have, ah, charmed you.” No breath, no twitching, not yet, not until the falchion has disappeared, not until He’s gone back to His bedchambers and decided to leave Caleb and his peers alone for the night, no more lessons, no more— no, that’s not right. Not now. 

“Here, let’s make it a trade? I’ll say mine, you say yours? No magic, no swords, no lies.” 

The falchion disappears and Caleb rubs his throat, feeling the ghost of a scratch from the blade. Fjord holds his hands palms up, maybe to show Caleb he no longer means harm, maybe as a sign of openness, transparency, or maybe as offer, pleading with Caleb to take this deal. 

A give-take. A calculated risk. A gamble. 

_This is a bad idea._

… 

They’re just sitting on their room’s floor, drinking shitty ale and talking, but Fjord is back there again, in his head, or at the bottom of the sea, or whatever world he’s trapped in when he dreams. He doesn’t look Caleb in the eyes frequently enough to gauge his reactions or whether he’s following this story as vividly as Fjord is re-experiencing it. 

_The agonizing pressure and bone-chilling, piercing cold of violent, storm tossed waters. Dark, dark, dark and pummeled deeper and deeper, bullied into giving up his breath to the waves like giving his lunch to the other, bigger and just as miserable bastards at the orphanage. He sacrifices a bit of himself, precious bubbles of air to be taken and whisked away by the water, its natural, greedy movement reluctantly telling him which way to struggle, which way is up in this dark void._

_It’s not enough, it’s never enough, and he comes just short of pushing his face into the bitter winds, hand breaching the surface for only a second before his lungs succumb to the water and he becomes one with the darkness enveloping him._

_And yet, he’s there on the shore, sword and nothing else to his name._

Fjord is not watching Caleb, but he does hear the familiar sound of a cup draining, the symphony of a man attempting to get drunk beyond the ability to recognize himself. He affords only a sympathetic smirk as he dives into his next drink and the next portion of his story. 

_Burning, burning, burning on the roof of his mouth and the back of his head, yellow eye boring into his skull and sword ripping into the delicate flesh of his throat. The gushing blood and the thick expanse of metal comes just short of choking him, but he feels every cut and has to put all his strength into pushing to make the stolen cultist’s sword go down._

_A deep voice and simple words echo encouragement in his ears. It’s not enough to take his focus away from his task, his command to Consume, and the pain that comes with it, but it’s enough to keep him going. Fueled by fear, anticipation, curiosity, who cares?_

_Reward. Reward. Reward._

“You’re in pretty deep shit then, ja?” 

“Yeah.” 

Leaning back and idly sloshing around the liquid left his cup, Caleb looks present for the first time since he started drinking, concentrating on the words laid out before him rather than the ones still in his head, haunting his past or lurking in his future. 

“Power… power needs a purpose. You have to have something you’re going to do with this, Fjord, or someone will decide for you. You cannot just wander aimlessly and hope to find your way,” Caleb buries his face into his cup again and mutters the last of his words, “You will not like the result.” 

“That sounds like it comes from experience.” 

With an expression caught somewhere between the shock of an animal caught in a trap and the apathetic acceptance of bleeding prey, Caleb downs the half cup of ale he holds. He does it way too fast, forcing down the alcohol in successive gulps despite the coughs shaking his chest. It’s almost painful to behold, but Fjord doesn’t dare interrupt. 

“Ja. Let’s get this over with.” 

Caleb is watching Fjord as he always is, observing his surroundings and sizing people up, but his eyes are not there anymore, faded into those of another person, a younger person, who has long since given himself to the flames. Caleb is looking at Fjord but he cannot see him, the sun is in his eyes and he is insisting he can handle the light. He _will_ handle it, he will not waste this opportunity, he will be everything he could be and more. 

_The uniform is crisp and the most expensive thing he’s ever worn, worth far more than the brilliant smile on his face, glittering like fool’s gold with the naïve hope of a child. Caleb and his friends are chasing dreams they never thought they would even touch, nurturing talents that never even had a chance. Before now, before Trent and the Academy. Oh, the things they’ll learn._

_Things like fire from nearly nothing, things like formal dancing, things like charming your way into a traitor’s mind, things like deadly faith in the Empire, things like keeping concentration on a spell with a knife into your hand, things like how to sleep with bruises all over your body, things like how to kill, why to kill, who to kill._

_He hears Trent’s words, so honest, so helpful, so impossible to disobey. He tastes a lovely dinner and ignores the vaguely bitter bite of poison that threatens him should he be dumb enough to swallow it. He sees Astrid’s parents collapse and sees her smile, victorious. He feels flames on his skin and he pushes into them, eager, so eager, to claim this power, whether he can handle it or not. He smells burning, but it’s only wood, only wood, only wood._

_You made the right choice, Caleb._

_They were traitors!_

_I know this is hard but-_

Caleb takes a breath and wishes he hadn’t downed all his liquor. Somewhere in the distance, Fjord is pouring him more, nudging it towards him, gentle, too gentle, he doesn’t understand it. Even this room, the one Fjord paid for, with its dirty wood floors and thin mattress in a splintered frame is so much different than— 

_Pristine white, so much white it hurts his eyes. Sturdy walls, locked doors, strangers standing over him. This is normal for Caleb, he has no questions for his captors or his environment, inquisitive mind burned from the inside out, foundation collapsing in on itself. All he knows is fear, everything is terrifying and he doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand the words or who he is or why he’s here or where he is._

_There are very few gaps in the blur of terror, but he does know rare days of clarity, months apart, where all he sees is Academy robes, so familiar, and all he hears is arcane words he can’t bother to fight anymore._

“I don’t remember those years very well.” 

Fjord nods, face neutral with practiced care. He’s still holding that glass. 

_A man in a green cloak, a necklace, a life on the run. Gifts, for someone who deserves nothing but the pain he’s brought upon himself and double the pain he’s brought upon others. He becomes a beggar, a thief, a conman. He is a shadow on the wall of an alley, cast by the weak fire he’s created in the damp mass of paper and twigs he’d been sleeping on._

_Caleb is a silhouette, standing straight with pride, curled in a ball from fear, hunched in hiding._

_Caleb’s world is a million threads, woven together but frayed to near breaking as he pushes them more and more, until they unravel and he can pull them back together again, better this time._

“I’m going to fix things.” There's no longer fire in Caleb's eyes, just smoldering ashes on damp wood. 

Fear of power is something Fjord should’ve started feeling long ago, but he can’t bring himself to it now, can’t bring himself to look at Caleb with the same apprehension he’s had ever since picking up that godsforsaken sword. Even at the suggestion behind Caleb’s words, suggestion of something that is world changing, world _destroying_. 

Instead of confronting it, that terrible, impossible idea, Fjord clears his throat. “I want to change things too.” 

“In your past?” 

“No, no I have plans to change things in the future.” Fjord chuckles, even if it’s inappropriate, even if he knows the things Caleb suggests are probably not as ridiculous as they seem. 

“Ah, well, that is considerably easier.” 

“Heh. You would think so, right?” Fjord leans back against the bed frame they’re sitting in front of, stretching and looking at Caleb with a side-eye, “Listen, Caleb. I’m certainly in no position to lecture you about power you can’t predict but- well, I’m saying you should think about it.” 

“I have thought about it.” And it’s so final, so _obvious_ , the way he says it. The dying twinkle in Caleb's eyes flickers and sways but stays, still determined, even after everything. Fjord just wishes he was focused on _anything else_ , but grief is a powerful thing, leading a man across a continent and through time. 

“Of course, I’m sorry, I just… I’m sorry.” Fjord looks down, studying the floor, and Caleb almost feels bad. 

Caleb’s head tilts a bit, squinting at Fjord like he’s trying to see into a dark room, eyes adjusting to assess his character with new information. His face softens, with sympathy, or at least the illusion of sympathy. 

“Perhaps you will change my mind, Fjord. You are a very interesting character.” Caleb’s face betrays no hope for this being true, but all Fjord can do is hope now. Hope that Caleb will again choose the inn room instead of prison cell. 

“That’s quite the compliment, coming from you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people consider the best way to bond with new friends is to go out for drinks together and share stories! The more you learn, the better, right?
> 
> The original title of this chapter was just "Oh No", because I'm exceptionally awful at chapter names, but I changed it at the last second so I could maintain this facade of being a Serious Writer. Oh, I also added a chapter count so you can see that you're in for the long haul here. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!


	11. What Are Friends For?

**MOLLY AND BEAU**

Molly _really_ does not tolerate loneliness, to the point of attempting to travel great distances by foot to steal his friend back. His only true friend out of the ten-ish people he knows on a first-name basis. 

It takes several painful, _boring_ days of walking and most of his stolen pack of food to travel down the road far enough away from town that he stumbles upon travelers going more exciting places than Kamordah. 

It’s not difficult for Molly to get people’s attention, dressed as he is, but it is considerably more difficult to get the proper _kind_ of attention. He’d rather not be mistaken for a very lost street performer, at the moment. 

Scratch that, that’s a _brilliant_ idea. 

“Hello? Excuse me!” 

The cart he’d spotted pulls to a stop next to Molly, its occupants, two dark-skinned humans, tipping their heads in concern and curiosity at him. 

_This’ll be too easy._

“Sorry to bother you, but are you heading to Deastok, by any chance? I seem to have,” Molly shuffles his feet and looks down, trying for sheepish, “missed my travelling party’s leave. I need to be in town for a performance in a few days and I just don’t have another ride…”

He looks up on the last word, letting the unspoken request hang hopefully in the air. The humans, a male and a female by the looks of them, give each other a knowing glance, conferring silently. 

Molly would guess they’re related, sharing similar features and near identical dark grey eyes, but they seem, at a glance, to have very different demeanors; the woman sports wild black hair run through with a white streak and wears tattered travelling clothes, while the man has a smoothly shaved head and is buttoned up with a conservative green cloak. The woman looks like she lives on the street or in the woods, now that Molly’s noticed those twigs in her hair, and the man looks like he belongs in an administrative position, or a temple, with the stiff posture he holds. 

Whatever their professions or relationship, there's something about the two of them, something that makes Molly's blood tingle, sleeping instincts trying to tell him something as his mind puts its fingers over its ears and tries to drown it out. 

The woman turns to smile down at Molly, intimidating despite the seemingly harmless expression.

“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

“Yes, since we’re going there anyway. It’ll be interesting,” the man smirks at Molly, obviously knowing more than he lets on, “to travel with a performer.” 

The woman takes the reigns of the horses as the man works to clear a spot on the cart, shoving aside a variety of bumpy bags and beat-up boxes, the contents of which Molly doesn’t want to know. He gestures for Molly to climb aboard, his polite, rigid smile matching his posture and clothes. 

The smile bugs Molly, like there’s something there that he _should_ see but he just _can’t_. 

They settle into silence for a while, listening only to the grunts of the horses and rattling of wheels. Molly figures this’ll likely end poorly for him, but he doesn’t exactly have many options. It’s not as if he can walk to Deastok with just the clothes on his back and half a lunch left in his bag. 

Eventually, the woman, who hasn’t cared to introduce herself, turns to the man, smiling at a joke Molly isn’t privy to. 

“It’s funny, I hadn’t heard anything about a circus being in town.”

The man hums, giving Molly an extra moment to change his story. “Me neither. What show are you a part of, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh we’re… a pretty small group. Call ourselves a circus, but we’re really just organized street performers. It’s all,” Molly thinks and fails to come up with a fake name, “Beau’s idea, she says if we _sound_ more official, it’ll get us more customers.”

“I’ve always wanted to see a circus. Haven’t you, Lucius?” the woman doesn’t wait for his nod as she turns to look at Molly, “It’s a shame we have pressing business in town. Do you have any tricks you could show us now?”

Her smile is sharp, canines just a bit too long for a human, if not long enough to be called fangs. He meets it with a smile of his own, much sharper, but not as terrifying. This, clearly, is a test and he has to think of something quickly, something impressive he could do, if he wants to pass—

“Juggling. I juggle.” He’s never juggled before, to his knowledge. 

Molly would’ve hit himself if the woman wasn’t watching him carefully, mouth twisted to keep a laugh from breaking through. She can’t possibly know that Molly can’t juggle and yet...

“I’d _love_ to see that.” She looks at the man, Lucius, who’s suppressing a giggle of his own. 

There’s a first time for everything, he supposes. Molly forces his grin to widen, refusing to break. He’s met plenty of intimidating strangers, why do these feel so different?

“Of course! Do you have anything I could borrow, preferably round and similarly sized?” 

They stop the cart as the woman rifles through their bags, looking for something to juggle. The man, Lucius, stares at Molly the whole time, grey eyes burning holes through him. Something about those eyes and teeth puts Molly on edge, makes his senses sharpen unnaturally. Darkness at the corners of his mind creeps inward, trying to remind him of something. He hopes it’s how to juggle. 

“Here,” she hands Molly three oranges, “These should work, right?”

“Yes, these are wonderful!” Molly studies the oranges, doing whatever necessary to keep from looking at those grey eyes, filled with the light of some energy Molly wants no part of. 

Molly weighs the fruits, trying to visualize what juggling should look like. Surely, it can’t be that hard, just toss and catch, right? He breathes, going all in on this gamble.

He tosses the fruits and, for a moment, he can see his whole charade falling apart and splattering on the bottom of a stranger’s cart. He imagines those sinister smiles dropping their polite veil, hears the murmur of “liar” and sees himself dead in a ditch on the side of the road, torn apart by whatever magic these two are hiding. 

The vision of disaster, of his impending doom at the hands of fruit, sparks something in him, like a match being struck against his veins and spreading fire through every nerve. His senses change, to compensate for this dangerous situation he’s landed himself in, making all the light fall on sharper colors and the ambient noises around him unbearably loud. 

He hears the strangers’ pulses, steady and slow; there’s two and then four, more beasts, more _somethings_ in the cart with them. Faint white scars seem to shine through clothing, highlighting marks of swords and claws. His nose fills with the metallic scent of blood and then something else, it takes him a second to recognize… wet dog?

His reflexes kick in, stronger even than his deliberate uses of his power, catching the fruits easily and more deftly than he thought possible. 

Whether it’s another hidden talent, beginner’s luck, or fate, Molly doesn’t care because it’s good enough to pass. His companions clap politely, nodding at each other to confirm some unspoken agreement. 

Molly half bows, playing to this audience as he would imagine his character doing. It’s different than anything he’s ever experienced around Beau, and it feels almost ill-fitting, weird to make people clap and smile when he’s usually making them look the other way as he robs them blind or run screaming as he bares his teeth. 

Weird, but not terrible. 

Lucius grins, seemingly genuinely thrilled at the display, though with the way his pulse thrums with a power Molly can _feel_ now, mirroring his own, he’d bet it has nothing to do with the juggling. 

“That’s incredible! Could you do it again?”

It’s going to be a long ride to Deastok.

…

Deastok is an odd little town, takes itself a bit too seriously. The guards, gates, and patrols are really a bit much, but after his lovely travelling companions drop him off at the gate, it’s a fairly simple thing to convince the guards he’s in town for a friend. It’s lucky that his winning smile breaks through the suspicion written across their faces; the one time he tells the truth and it nearly bites him in the ass. 

Once within Deastok, the town fades into a largely unremarkable farming town, the only hints of something greater being the larger estates looming in the hills beyond it. The middle of the town is the only vaguely exciting part, lined with small shops and other buildings to accommodate public works. 

He skips the usual formalities, though it pains him to pass by all the new sights, and heads straight for the building a helpful local pointed out. 

The Cobalt Soul, not as fancy as he predicted. From Beau’s family, he expected prestige and wealth, not this off-brand approximation of a monastery. In this dismal little town, they seemed to have settled for plain and practical. 

The building is the largest on its street, situated at the end to serve as the last of the center of activity before the town fades into farms and homesteads. It’s bigger than he expected, but not sprawling, consisting of one longish building with a library at its center and two wings off to the side. Compact, everything one would need from a combination monastery and library efficiently packed into the least amount of space possible. 

There’s a wall around the building’s perimeter, giving some coverage for the rows of windows on either side of library and winding around the back to box in some sort of courtyard. It’s structured to make it easy to follow the path to the front door, the library, but harder to make it into any of the other rooms, like the living quarters Molly is hoping to break into. Inconvenient, but he didn’t exactly expect a red carpet. 

Molly can only see so much just by peering in through the open gate and he’d look suspicious if he were to scout the length of it. In the daylight, anyway. 

He moves back to the street, assessing his next plan. Through the windows, he can see shelves full of books, like Kamordah's library but stuffier, forsaking any of the nice desks and chairs regular people enjoy. It's near deserted, a result of being in the least crowded part of town. 

Maybe that's the way they like it. It certainly provides a generous veil of privacy, particularly useful in obscuring whatever occurs in the expansive courtyard behind the library.

It’s private enough to make Molly stick out by standing on the street in front of it, with no one else around. Reluctantly, he heads back to town to fend off curious locals and pass the next couple of hours before sunset. He’s lucky those humans gave him food, jerky of some sort, he doesn’t think he could manage to socialize at a tavern right now. Too nervous. 

When night falls, Molly returns. Breaking and entering has become a specialty of his, learnt secondhand from trailing Beau. He knows the ins and outs of getting into and out of a house with almost no trace of his guilt, and almost no valuables, left behind. A monastery will be no different, he assumes. 

As he slowly circles the building with the barely held together patience of trained but very antsy criminal, Molly reverses his coat to the dark side that all the vibrant orange patches were sewn onto (thanks to Beau’s brilliant tailoring idea), and unsheathes the dagger he stole from Tracy, ready for a fight if he’s spotted. 

The closer he looks, the less this building looks like it belongs to such an official sounding organization, but he supposes not every monastery can be fancy. One of the low-budget, branching locations, maybe. But, really, what does he know about monk business? He can barely read, let alone pour through all those heavy tomes that line the walls of the place.

There’s significantly less security than he pictured, though, it’s probably swarming with people perfectly capable of taking out intruders. He positions himself in a tree, getting comfortable enough to spend the whole night watching the building carefully for any signs of patrolling guards or of movement between buildings, preparing to strike in the morning. If he could at least figure out which wing houses the sleeping quarters or, better yet, see which room Beau is in, it would make getting her out much easier. 

From up in the tree, there's no way to know which window is Beau's, or if she's even in one of these rooms, but Molly did not come here with a plan so he'll have to make due. He’s willing to be reckless, if that’s what it takes to free Beau. 

Sunlight filters in through the tree branches, the first lights of dawn reflecting across the windows of the Cobalt Soul. 

_It’s time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be one part, but it ran super long! Since there's been a delay in updates, I'm just posting them back to back instead of rearranging my chapter order. Grab some popcorn!


	12. What Are Friends For? pt. 2

**MOLLY AND BEAU**

Zeenoth is having an extremely pleasant morning, all things considered. His most difficult student, Beauregard, will be in the hands of the fighters for most of the day, so he doesn’t have to force her to do any bookwork, yet. They say she’s catching onto the fighting remarkably fast, but he’s not surprised. Zeenoth knows, better than anyone, how much suppressed anger Beauregard has. 

Even the bookwork isn’t so difficult for her; she’s much smarter than she looks, and far smarter than the average criminal of her nature. The only thing making it difficult is herself, she’s resisting, uselessly, the path they’ve planned for her. If she’d just give up all these silly ideas about defying authority and fate, she’d be an ace student, letting her natural drive for learning fuel her already sizable intellect. 

He sighs at his desk, flipping through another book and staring harder at the words, trying to push Beauregard, and the frustrations associated with her, from his mind. 

Many of his colleagues find this location, an offshoot of their more official Archive in Zadash, intended as extra storage of new members and books rather than a center of operation, to be dull. Nothing ever happens in Deastok, nothing worthy of a monk’s attention, but Zeenoth thinks that’s just wonderful- all the more time for peaceful studying. 

He’s having an extremely pleasant day, doing his studies leisurely, not being bothered by anyone.

Until he hears the screams. 

He wonders if he can ride this one out, find a secluded corner and let someone else deal with it, but there’s two other archivists standing now, moving towards the sound, and Zeenoth feels obligated to follow, lest he look like a complete douchebag. 

It’s a monk of the Cobalt Soul’s duty to protect when they can. Unfortunately, that includes dealing with a crazed tiefling that has barged into the monastery shouting and working everyone into a panic. 

“What- what is the meaning of this?”

The first thing Zeenoth does is give the stranger a good look, trying to figure what the hell could possibly be going on. Purple tiefling, terrifying red eyes, wearing a sort of coat or robe that looks as if it was up cut up and sewn together by a child. 

His first impression is that this must be some sort of joke or a truly awful infiltration attempt but there’s little symbols of Ioun tied in the tiefling’s hair and adorning his horns. It’s rare to find another worshipper of the Mistress, Zeenoth is hesitant to distrust such an extraordinary find. 

The rest of the atrocious getup further sparks his curiosity because, really, _what_ is that coat made out of? It must be several different fabrics and maybe things that aren’t fabrics at all, what once seemed like silk is now clearly some sort of flimsy plastic-

“Sir! You have to help, there’s- there’s danger!” the tiefling seems desperate as they turn to Zeenoth, and all his doubts are forgotten. Surely, with this sort of performance, there must be at least _some_ danger. 

“Where? What’s happening?”

“Out on the road! There’s-“ the tiefling coughs, a sickening death rattle, and a wound on his neck opens, gushing blood, getting worse with every hack. 

“Someone get a medic! Sir- can you hear me?” Zeenoth grabs the tiefling as they collapse, falling limp into Zeenoth’s arms. He looks up to see if anybody heard him but claws sink into his arms, forcing his gaze back down at the tiefling staring up at him, a desperate look in those blood red eyes.

“…abominations.” The voice is hoarse, like their throat is torn up. Oh _gods_ , what if they don’t make it?

Two other monks pull the tiefling from Zeenoth’s arms, mumbling questions as they drag their patient deeper into the facility, leaving Zeenoth alone with blood on his hands and no idea what just happened. 

…

If Molly has learned anything from watching Beau lie to people, it’s how to sell a story. Stick to something and commit all the way, even if the details don’t seem to match up. Most people aren’t confident enough to challenge strangers, especially when those strangers are scaring the shit out of them and forcing a panic response. 

But there’s not time to linger on strategy- there’s work to do, guards to get away from, and a person to steal. 

He calls on his power, taking hold of that dark, snaking shadow that seems to seep into every inch of him, even the parts he’s adorned in bright oranges and shiny things. The blood in his veins pumps faster and gushes out of the vessel he opened in his neck, like the spray of a beer keg that’s been obstructed. Old, borrowed feelings take over and, for a few seconds, he’s Lucien. Molly is Lucien and Lucien is _livid_ , but he directs that righteous anger into something that he actually needs, pushing it against the people holding him, Beau’s captors. 

The two monks on either side of him shriek and grab at their eyes, now black and pouring blood, but Molly doesn’t wait to see what happens to them, just shoves out of their grasp and books it down the hallway. There’s a lingering chill down his spine, a soul that hasn’t quite relinquished its hold on Molly’s body, but he shrugs it off, knowing that it was necessary to get to Beau. 

If Molly has learned anything from Beau, it's that he's invincible, even if his body tells him otherwise.

He takes the nearest right in the hallway they’d been taking him down, hoping the blinded guards won’t be able to track him. His footsteps are softer now, stepping with the inside of his foot like Beau showed him to. 

Also like Beau, he doesn’t have a well thought out plan, especially since he’s lost any sense of where he could be. He’s in one of the wings off of the main library, but the rooms in this hallway don’t look like dormitories, the few doors with windows that aren’t darkened completely reveal desks and books, little alcoves for studying. 

He just keeps moving until he happens upon an important looking room, the only one with a plaque. 

_Office_. Perfect. 

The inside of the office makes Molly wish he’d paid more attention during Beau’s trips to the library. So. Many. Papers. 

There’s stacks of ledgers everywhere, on the desk, on shelfs, in cupboards. Big books shoved with more paper than they were probably meant to hold. 

_“Any important paper that you’ll ever find will either be on the desk, or hidden in an obscure place. Drawers with false bottoms, fake paintings, double locked safes- but_ always _check the top of the desk first. Otherwise, you’ll look like a dumbass if you miss it.”_

Open folders and scattered papers are all across the desk, as if whoever was studying them left in a hurry. 

The papers in this stack are all the same- white with lots of boxes and little numbers, ratings of some sort, on the left hand side, categorized note boxes on the right and a sketch of a face at the top. Beauregard Lionett, as luck may have it, is the first paper of the stack. 

Molly’s eyes skim over the numbers, condescending notes and, after scanning the page repeatedly, a little room number. 

The dorms, he reasons, should be easier to find than reading that damned paper was; if they’re not in this half of the building they’ll be in the other half. He’ll just go back the way he came and try not to run into anyone. 

Unfortunately, the monks here are more competent than the gullible townspeople Molly has stolen from in the past and they’re crowding the hallways, searching for their escaped tiefling. Molly reverses his coat and takes a steadying breath, waiting for a group to pass, and leaving the room after they’ve gone. With some strategic ducking into empty rooms, he _almost_ makes it to the library, the halfway point. 

“There he is!” There’s three of them, in those pretentious blue robes, rushing down the hallway right on his tail. 

He turns, yelling out a curse but not stopping to see if it takes effect, still attempting to make it to the next hallway. More doors open, revealing a new party of monks coming to confront him head-on, blocking his path. They look familiar, the blood stains around their eyes evidence of their previous encounter with Molly. 

_“If you haven’t gotten what you came for, chances are they don’t care if you get away. Better to get the hell out of dodge than stick around and try your hand at fighting a crownsguard.”_

There’s a bigger set of doors behind him, he’s hoping it’ll lead out of the building, once he’s out-

A monk, the prissy blonde one that came to his “rescue”, bursts out of the door he’s eyeing, revealing a flash of sunlight from outside, with two others in tow. Molly’s boxed in now, pissed off secretaries on one side and sweaty, battle-hardened monks wincing from his infernal on the others. 

_Only one way to do this, I suppose._

Molly charges the line in front of the outside doors, aiming for the blonde and managing to knock him down, ripping himself from the grip of the other monks as he slams into the doors, spilling out into the bright courtyard. 

He doesn’t take the time to satiate his curiosity about the monk training grounds, ignoring the contents of the courtyard in favor of surveying his escape options. 

There’s a wall to his left. He jumps, falls short, hooks his claws into the stone and pulls himself gracelessly over the side of the wall, onto the hard ground and scrambling into the tree line. He makes a note to leave any future acrobatics to the monks. 

He hears shouting, fading into the distance. Nobody comes over the wall after him. 

_“Don’t give up. Nearly nobody expects you to try again after failing, especially if it was a disaster the first time.”_

He breathes, trying to get his head back in the game. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, that’s what Beau always says, right? He’s got a room number, a better view of the layout of the building and an idea of how security is handled. That’s more than what he started with and more than enough to try again with a different plan, something more his speed. He’s still figuring this out, after all- maybe he’s less an optimized criminal scheme kind of guy and more a brute force, smash and grab kind of criminal. 

Hiding in the trees, he waits, with reluctant patience, for night to fall, having determined that the monks’ instincts are not at all dulled in the early morning hours. It gives Molly plenty of time to think about Beau and how much easier things will be when he finally gets her back. His observation of the building is interrupted a few times as he dozes off, dreams of Harvest Close festivals and drinking games dancing in his head. 

Stars blink in the sky above him, little fires sparking to life and burning through the blanket of darkness. Molly hops down from his tree, approaching the Cobalt Soul for what he hopes will be the last time. 

The left side of the facility, where he’s determined the dorms to be, is a familiar sight from that first night of stakeout when he was hoping, against all odds, that he would catch a glimpse of Beau in one of the windows. Above the window on each miserable cube room is a delicately engraved number, he spots the one Beau was assigned from a distance and moves in, aiming for a much quicker, if not smoother, operation in round two. 

The monks must be busy in the other hallway or the office, the assumed target of his “infiltration”, because no one is outside patrolling to see him climb clumsily over the wall, and creep up under the window sill. 

_“To successfully open a window without leaving any evidence behind you have to remember…”_

Ah. He wasn’t paying much attention that day. 

No matter. His elbow will do. 

For a second, it seems like the window won’t shatter, that he’ll be left with only a spidery fracture and a sore elbow, but the cracks spread, compromising the pane until it gives way in an explosion of shards. It’d definitely be a pretty display, if Molly wasn’t distracted by Beau’s face appearing on the other side. 

“Molly?” 

She looks sleepy, like she was getting ready to go to bed. Molly wishes he’d had the luxury of sleeping in the last day or so, he also wishes he had the luxury of having a pleasant morning chat, without the strong possibility of monks coming to investigate the broken window and people climbing over the wall. He grabs her arm, pulling her out of the window. 

“Let’s go!”

Beau does not need to be told twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I had some personal issues last week, then when I sat down to start editing I realized the chapter needed a LOT more work than I anticipated. Work that ended up doubling it in length. So, I hoped you enjoyed the longer chapters this week.
> 
> A note: I hate geography. I don't know how distances work. I just picked the nearest town between Kamordah and Trostenwald, I have no idea if it would make sense to have the Cobalt Soul there, but I guess it doesn't particularly matter. 
> 
> It did allow me to put in a cameo from the Loreleis (since apparently they live in Deastok?), so that's cool.


	13. I Need A Hero

There are rough scales, an endless expanse of them, sliding against Jester’s skin. The muscles underneath the snakeskin are tensing and constricting around her arms and her waist and her legs, pulling tight and locking her in place. Bones poke out of scale-less spots of flesh, rotting and soft in some places, to stab into Jester’s arms. 

She can’t see Nott, she seems to be _nowhere_ in the battlefield below where the giant snake is suspending Jester. Oh _gods_ , Nott is gone and Jester is slowly being suffocated, she should have never agreed to help that farmer, no matter how much silver he offered—

The impact of slamming into the ground hurts, but not nearly as much as the bruising grip of the snake did. As she hits the ground, Jester’s mind is wiped of anything except for the moment of landing, of being released from that monster. She gasps, coughing as she inhales the cloud of dust she’s disrupted, and lets the oxygen stir her mind back to life. 

Jester has to rewind her memory to make sense of what’s happening. Several seconds too late, she hears Nott's loud cry, the sound of crossbow bolts sinking into scaled hide, and the screeches of the half-dead snake. 

It’s all she can do to stand, run the opposite direction, crouch behind an upturned wagon, and heal herself. From her cowering position, she can see the snake whip around to face the little goblin that’s sticking toothpicks in its enormous, nearly impenetrable torso. She can see Nott just _barely_ evade its fangs and swinging tail, ducking back into her impossible hiding place behind a tree. The snake readies itself to strike again but not before Jester has the chance to _scream_ in a language she doesn’t use with anybody but her mom, though, she would _never_ speak to her mom like this. 

Before she even knows if the scream, and the hellish energy behind it, takes effect, she uses her next breath to chime a high pitched note that reverberates with the sound of bells, far too loud and seemingly sourceless as they echo in the empty air. The holy bells make the snake’s whole body shake, it’s rotting, undead flesh becoming singed in the sunlight that seems much brighter now. These sounds- a screech sharp as ice shards and the ringing of knock-off heavenly bells- are last things the snake hears as it falls limp to the ground. 

The scales begin to droop and slowly slide off of its body as the flesh beneath them melts and disintegrates, leaving only rapidly rusting scales and a gory skeleton after just a few seconds of true death in the sunlight of this little town.

“Well,” Nott steps out of her “hiding” place and limps towards Jester, scrape from those fangs clearly ailing her, “I suppose that’ll make clean up a little easier.”

Jester huffs, just a little, in disappointment as she picks up a scale and finds its shiny hue totally gone, an ugly waste product in its place. “Yeah, I guess.” 

“Let’s go get our money?”

“And our acclaim as _heroes_ , Nott! We just saved, uh,” her head whips around to find a sign or something denoting, specifically, what they just saved and finds nothing, “This  
wonderful place! From being tormented by dead snakes.”

“Yeah. I guess we did.”

Jester can’t tell if Nott smiles or not under that mask, but she chooses to believe that she does. That forced uninterested tone won't fool anyone, least of all Jester. 

…

The farmers were very happy. The happiest farmers Nott has seen in years, which, in hindsight, isn’t saying much. It’s nice to make someone happy instead of terrified or disgusted, for once. 

Jester was, of course, a natural when speaking with the townspeople; she has an affinity for making people feel at ease even when confronted by a relentlessly cheerful, incredibly beefy tiefling and a mysterious halfing who refuses to show her face. She managed to make this small town comfortable around not just strangers, but strangers that came into town out of nowhere and slew a giant, undead snake that had been destroying their crops. 

If not for Jester’s talent in diffusing tense conversations through nearly off-putting levels of optimism, the negotiations for pay from the farmer may have been the last of their time in Trostenwald. The way he stared at Nott suggested he saw more than a halfing and more than a creepy mask, maybe he glimpsed a hint of dark green in the shadow of the hood or recognized the unique cadence of the scratchy, high-pitched voice, but he didn't say anything or alert authorities. By herself, Nott might’ve been thrown in jail or killed but with Jester, there’s just no denying her proclamation of Nott as her best friend (who’s “so very shy!”). It’s impossible to believe that such a nice girl would befriend a _goblin_ , of all things. 

Nott supposes that’s one area Yasha wouldn’t have helped in; it was probably to their benefit that they were down one gigantic, awkward woman when they attempted to endear themselves to the locals. 

On the other hand, it could’ve been useful to have someone for Nott to hide behind and obscure her face from the farmer's sharp eye, or someone to distract the snake while Nott shot it. Or to bash the snake’s head in, and prevent it from hurting Jester altogether. 

It would’ve been nice if Yasha hadn’t up and disappeared, leaving Jester sad and Nott bitter, but Nott knows a little about disappearing from the people you love and she knows there’s nothing they can do to change Yasha’s decision. 

"Nott, Nott, look how much money we have now! We could get you a new cloak, and I could get a new set of paints, or we could-"

"Buy supplies practical for travelling on the road?"

Jester pouts but her frown, as always, is short lived, turning into the little grin she likes to share with Nott as she leans down to her level.

"That's a good idea! We should do more quests first, I'm sure there's more snakes or something to slay in this place?"

That question gives Nott pause, strikes her with a thought of _What am I doing?_ Thievery was one thing- a matter of survival, or a matter of obsession- but heroics? It’s almost… unnecessarily extravagant, like another step in what should be a simple chain of finding someone with coin and taking it. Why kill for money when she could cut out the middle man, the undead snake, and just pickpocket the farmer?

Who ever heard of a goblin hero, anyway?

Nott looks up from her drink and finds the answer to her introspections. Jester is smiling, beaming at the townspeople still staring at them suspiciously across the tavern, clearly content with her new exciting life as a hero. Nott didn’t think she’d ever be a hero, and she certainly didn’t think she’d become so attached to a tiefling that the reward of making Jester’s dreams come true outweighs the drive for easy money. 

Of course, just below Jester’s brilliant smile, there’s those coins again, in Jester’s hands. She’s counting them carefully, one by one, clinking against the bar in a stack and then sliding with soft clangs into her purse. They’re something shiny, sure, something that Nott _wants_ but they’re something else, too. They’re a future, for herself, or someone out of reach. 

Nott thinks of the snake, debates whether those coins and Jester’s smile are really worth all they’ve gone through, the brush with the death, the incredible thrill of making the shot, the adrenaline that made her feel truly _alive_ for the first time in a long year of survival.

She supposes it couldn’t be too bad to do this for just a bit longer. After all—

"How many undead creatures can one town have?”

…

A lot. There happens to be a lot of undead creatures in Trostenwald, though Jester isn’t sure if this place is nasty, cursed, or if this is just how the Empire is. 

The townspeople said the influx is unusual but Jester thinks that’s just what someone who lives in a zombie infested town would say. Although, she supposes it is a _little_ weird that her and Nott are almost always the first to run into them. 

It’s also a little weird that they’re all reptilian or amphibious. Mostly snakes, though none nearly as large as the first, and lots of frog-like things, morphed and decomposed almost beyond recognition. 

Weird. 

Nevertheless, it’s a good way to earn respect and rewards from the people they’re protecting, so it’s a pretty sweet setup overall. 

Until, of course, there’s decomposing, rubbery flesh dripping down onto her face from the gaping maw of a frog thing that’s pining her painfully against the dirt road, while Nott lays somewhere out of her line of sight, hopefully just unconscious. 

It seems they’ve pushed their luck just a bit too far, weeks of exterminating undead pests finally coming to a head with this one stupid, giant frog. She’s seemed to have met her match and she finds herself wishing she would’ve stopped after the last one, after they earned enough coin to buy paints. 

She should’ve stopped before the thrill of the heroism got to her, seeped into her veins and set up residence there, where she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to extract it without depriving her heart of its newfound _freedom_. 

A tongue strikes her face and she shrieks a rebuke but it doesn’t do anything this time, concentration wavering from the sensation of sludge dripping into her clothes. She’s not sure what she can do, she can’t see Nott, can’t pry herself out of this stupid fiend’s disgusting grasp, and her spells have been missing all day. 

She should’ve listened to Nott when she said they should leave Trostenwald, keep moving. She shouldn’t have spent all her mom’s money in that first town, on all those souvenirs and that scam. She should’ve listened to her mom when she said the Empire was dangerous. 

She thinks of her mom and Nott and Yasha, closing her eyes so the thought of them is the last thing she sees, instead of the frog’s gross mouth. 

The air suddenly drops in temperature, a strong, icy wind forcing its way into the gap between Jester’s face and the frog’s head. At first, Jester thinks she’s just been covered in more cold, wet frog flesh and that the frog is blocking the sunlight but no, the sky is definitely much, much darker and she can smell rain. Cold drops of water are gently washing away the shit on her face until it becomes a torrent, almost forcing her to breathe in water. She hopes Nott is ok, she always seems so nervous in the rain. 

In the rain, it’s hard not to remember those days on the road, when they thought they may actually be consumed by a flood or swept away by the currents of mud at their feet. It’s different now, because Jester can’t get up to help anyone and Nott is lying helpless somewhere in this sudden downpour.

There’s a clap of thunder as lightning tears the sky apart above Jester, shining through the slightly translucent, sickly green flesh of the undead frog. 

The smell of rotting amphibious flesh is much worse now, burnt and magnified by the crash of lightning. Jester breathes as the pressure on her chest eases and the creature is slides off her, its head blown open by nature’s smite. 

The half second of flash illuminates a figure Jester doesn’t recognize, but it’s very scary, surely another enemy, surely just another way this day has gone horribly wrong. Jester wants to run, ease her terror by getting this thing out of her sight, but the silhouette is standing between her and Nott so she _can’t_ run away, can’t let this stupid fear paralyze her and prevent her from helping her friend. 

She stands on shaky legs, letting the remaining sludge slosh off her dress, and faces down a fallen angel with wings of bone and torn skin, void-black eyes and… Yasha’s face. 

_Oh, shit._

There’s lightning and yelling and the surging of a storm. The clouds _rage_ above them, swirling into a shape Jester thinks looks like a massive man, fighting back to back with Yasha. She blinks and it’s gone, replaced with just the bodies of decomposing frogs. The smaller frog creatures, scattered around the field, are dead, drowned, struck, and slashed to bits faster than Jester’s eye can see. 

Jester takes a half step forward, her feet still reluctant to approach despite her mind screaming that it’s _just Yasha, just Yasha_. 

“Yasha?”

The bigger women turns to her and says nothing, letting her empty black eyes stare at Jester, as if she doesn’t remember her. But that’s impossible— nobody ever forgets Jester, especially a friend like Yasha. 

Jester’s eyes dart nervously from the dark eyes to the skeletal wings to the lightning sparking along the surface of a greatsword, a smooth, obsidian-black blade in Yasha’s hands. Jester smiles, hoping that will jog Yasha’s memory. 

“You got a new sword! I _love_ it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gang is back together again, sharing near-death experiences like true friends. 
> 
> What happens to your friendships when you disappear and come back to save them as a terrifying fallen angel? I guess we'll find out in a few weeks! Stay tuned!


	14. Soaked In Seawater, Covered In Ash

**FJORD AND CALEB**

The longer he travels with Fjord, the more Caleb feels as if they are on a sinking ship and he’s desperately trying to drain the water with a single bucket- but it could be worse. Honestly, he's convinced himself that this’ll probably be fine, especially as long as Caleb just sits back and watches as Fjord works his magic, literally and figuratively. 

Watching Fjord talk this poor bastard out of his horse is like watching a boat sink from the shore, _Caleb_ can certainly see it taking on water and going down but _Fjord_ doesn’t seem to have noticed it yet, the leak just sluggish enough for him to ignore. It’s the opposite of watching a house burn down; fire spreads so, so quickly and it is _impossible_ to ignore the smoke and the heat, like Fjord is now. 

They're hiding behind necessity and defense and impulse and justice just to excuse these things that they do, these little crimes and cruelties, but Caleb doesn't really mind, doesn't have the moral objections he thinks Fjord would if he took the time to put a stop to his cycle of denial. Caleb has done much worse than put on a voice, conjure a new face, and cast a spell on some stranger just so they can travel into the Empire easier. Fjord probably has too, he just refuses to think about it. 

He refuses to think about it, probably because it would bother him to peel back the layers of deceit he's wrapped around his own thoughts and analyze what his power really means, and how he may be misusing it. Fjord, for all his show of being a good, honest, just person, seems to have no problem using the dark powers of his pact to screw with other people for their benefit. He’s managed so far by just _ignoring_ the realities of his power, but it’s only a matter of time before his façade falls apart. 

Fjord is an excellent jumble of contradiction and hypocriticism and Caleb, even as he kicks himself for it, is following his path. He finds himself lapsing into the sort of thoughtless impulse Fjord follows, charming people just because he can, casting spells just because he wants to _see_ the power flare. Just the other day he burned away some of the bushes in their path, nearly starting a wildfire for a moment's convenience, an amateur, stupid use of magic that could _destroy them_ if he's not careful. 

"We'll just be on our way then." Fjord's voice, or whoever’s voice he's using at the moment, wobbles just a bit at the tail end of the conversation and when he turns back to Caleb, his face painted with panic.

"We should _go_ ," Fjord hisses, keeping a borrowed smile on his face and forcing himself not to look back at the now horseless, dazed man. The voice he uses for those last few words is unfamiliar, and Caleb knows they're in real hot water when he can’t recognize Fjord’s voice.

Oh, _gods_ , this is going to be a catastrophe.

Fjord pulls Caleb, who is all too willing to get the hell out of there, away before the results of whatever botched transaction Fjord just finished come back to haunt them. It doesn't matter anyway, they have two horses and now they're leaving, deeper into the Empire.

Caleb would be lying if he said he wasn't incredibly nervous about their destination but there's really no way around it; _everything_ worth happening happens in the Empire, they've got the best books and the newest knowledge. Stuff Caleb needs to do what he has to do and stuff that Fjord has convinced himself will be helpful. 

Maybe it will, Caleb doesn't really know anymore. Every day that Fjord decides to talk to Caleb, especially about magic, is a day Caleb finds new surprises. 

Fjord is an impressively unaware person, for as functional as he seems. He is constantly, _constantly_ , in the process of digging his own grave whilst asking everybody how he keeps ending up in a hole. And he’s optimistic too, always believing that there’s something out there that will help, that someone will be able to explain this terrible ordeal he’s gotten himself into and show him a pleasant way out. A pleasant way out where he gets to satiate his curiosity and reap the rewards, without paying the price. 

What a fool. There’s _always_ a price to pay. 

Caleb is always having to field questions about magic, questions with answers that never apply to Fjord and Caleb knows that, of course he knows, of course he knows what Fjord is and why an academy will never be able to help him, why an academy would be the worst thing for him. 

But with every moment he spends with Fjord he feels himself swaying into that dark side of idiotic recklessness, not always with actions, but thoughts. Thinking, maybe there is a way to help Fjord, thinking, maybe he should just _do_ something or he should stop thinking about it, start moving on, stop blaming himself. 

It’s _wrong_. Fjord is wrong, wrong about everything, wrong about Caleb and what Caleb should do. Of course he’s wrong, he’s made a deal with some sort of entity and he still thinks it's not his fault, that there's a happy ending to his story. 

And yet, Caleb sort of respects his ballsiness, confidence he doesn’t think he’ll ever truly re-master, something he desires, subconsciously, even if he knows it wouldn’t do him any good. 

Fjord’s mind is luring itself and Caleb into a trap of complacency, encouraging them to just let things happen and let things be, do what they want and never think about what could go wrong. It goes against everything Caleb does, everything he’s worked to instill in himself, every way he’s enforced his punishment. Always thinking, always processing, always regretting. 

That’s the other thing: Caleb doesn’t want Fjord to charge forward with this power. He knows what unchecked power can do. He knows what misunderstood power can do. He knows, he’s _seen_ , what power in the hands of fools and children and blind patriots can do. Despite everything, despite that Fjord is still just a stranger, if a very kind stranger that Caleb has been travelling with for weeks and has shared far too much with, Caleb doesn’t want Fjord to do something he’ll regret. 

Caleb doesn’t want Fjord to end up like him. He’s just not sure if it’s already too late. 

“You good, Caleb?” 

Fjord is staring at him from the horse beside him. Caleb straightens out his face, his mind must’ve wandered for a moment. More moments of thoughtlessness, Fjord must be infecting him. 

“Ja.”

“You, uh, looking forward to getting farther into the Empire? On the way to the center, right?” 

Fjord doesn’t need to bring that up when they’re so far away from the capital, but he’s testing the waters, using the extreme to provoke a reaction. Sensing Caleb’s nerves and trying to get his mind where Caleb’s is. 

“Of course.” 

They stare at each other, neither confident enough to make a move. They’re both lying and scheming, but they can’t see through each other’s veils well enough to make an accusation. Better to stray on the polite side, silently vying for any advantage they can get without knocking off the careful balance of their partnership. Charming bastards, the both of them. 

“To, um,” Fjord nearly the drops the map as he pulls it out of his bag, “Trostenwald?”

Caleb stares straight ahead at the horizon, the sunset spreading like a fire across the sky. A world set aflame by a couple of assholes with more magic than they know what to do with.

“Ja.”

…

Fjord is more confused than ever now that he knows Caleb’s deal. The whole tragic, fucked up mess. 

He’s torn about how to handle Caleb, on one hand he wishes he could comfort him, tell him he can’t blame himself, but he knows that Caleb would never believe him. On the other hand, he feels for Caleb and his goals. Can he really ask Caleb to give up the stupid, reckless thing he wants to do if Fjord is doing something equally stupid and reckless?

It’s different though.

Right?

He should really focus on the task at hand. Caleb is talking to a librarian, if this place could even be called a library, more accurately described as a disorganized yard sale that just happens to have books. Except it's not Caleb, not the Caleb that Fjord has grown used to. 

No, this Caleb is confident, easily lying and charming his way into the librarian’s good graces, convincing him to show him more books, give him a discount, do what he says. This Caleb wields magic with an finesse that Fjord can only dream of, becoming a new person in a single exhale, illusions dressing him as he believes the shopkeep would like to see. 

It's strange, this homeless man he thought he’d be taking care of is now his greatest inspiration for the road ahead of him. Fjord aspires to be like Caleb, to be knowledgeable and sure in his magic, rather than just guessing and hoping for the best most of the time. He’s trying to concentrate more, think things through like Caleb does instead of diving blindly into danger. 

Caleb holds himself with a trained superiority, leveraging his power against an opponent he’s already sized up. He already knows what he’s going to say, precisely laid out words aimed to _resolve_ , rather than to just _appease_. He knows how to word his suggestions just right, knows exactly what disguise to take. Magic is his tool, bent to his will, a stark contrast to Fjord’s strenuous hold on largely his unknown abilities. Caleb is, as far as Fjord is concerned, a master of his craft and Fjord has so very much to learn.

The books stack with muted thuds and Caleb turns back to Fjord, walking briskly but calmly towards the door. 

Caleb has a strained expression on his face, the near-panic Fjord knows too well from being in these situations with him so many times. The involuntary concern takes over again and suddenly, in Fjord’s mind, Caleb is again that nervous, dangerous man on the side of road that Fjord needs to take care of, this person he’s somehow responsible for. Fjord doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to be the one taking care of someone, but he can’t stop himself from taking charge, from leading when he sees slack, however slight.

He thinks the habit may started in his days helping as an eager deckhand or assisting those less fortunate at the orphanage, or maybe he's just an idiot and a sap. Or maybe, just maybe, he's so hungry for any ounce of power he can get his hands on that he can't stop himself from taking over whenever possible. 

“Hey, you good?” Fjord turns to Caleb, mimicking that analyzing expression of his and attempting to ascertain what could’ve rattled him, with little success. 

Caleb stares at him, a questioning look only slightly different from his default wide eyed stare, familiar to Fjord with how often he’s on the receiving end of it. “Ja. You?”

And _that’s_ a little unusual for Caleb, usually there’s a recovery after these things, a lingering discomfort from either the magic or the social interaction or maybe even just the tenacity it takes to shoulder his way into getting what he wants using any means necessary. Caleb, for all he demands of the world, is not very loud about it and prefers to take quiet, measured risks rather than say fuck it all and cast spells until something works. 

It was too risky for Caleb to use magical means to convince that shopkeep, he’d typically rather leave empty-handed than get caught enchanting a random citizen. Odd. 

“I’m good, I’m good. I must say, your skills with charms and charisma are excellent. I can see how you’d be good with a con, as you said.”

“Ja, perhaps I’m taking after you, eh?”

Fjord chuckles, the obviously fake, diplomatic sort that he knows Caleb can see through. “I wouldn’t say that. I think you’re far braver than me, and your courage is well-deserved. Your abilities are, well, they’re amazing.”

Caleb doesn’t flinch at the compliment, as he usually would, just tilts his head a little, studying Fjord in a way he knows makes him squirm. “I am not the one who uses dark magic openly and frequently, friend.”

Fjord’s head snaps up, surveying his surroundings for people who may have overheard, before realizing that Caleb has steered them subtly away from the general hustle and bustle, into a more deserted walkway, because of course he has. 

“That doesn’t make me brave.” _Maybe just stupid_ , he thinks, but doesn’t admit.

“Mm.” 

And that’s it, Fjord has learned that means Caleb has nothing more to add. That’s all he’ll be getting out of him today, another layer of enigma unfolded as he slowly peels away the darkness obscuring the full picture of Caleb, revealing what he can beneath the burn marks. He knows so much and _still_ can’t understand. It’s becoming an unfortunately familiar feeling for Fjord. 

“Any idea where we should head next? I believe that’s about it for book stores, I’m afraid.”

“Wherever you would like to go.”

So curt, Fjord wonders if he said something wrong but no, Caleb is still looking at him, watching to see what he’ll do next. Just quiet, not seething. 

“Um, well,” Fjord forces his mind to review everything they’ve seen the last few days here, demanding an answer of it, any answer at all, so he can at least seem like he has a plan, a plan to measure up to Caleb’s constant planning. Fjord wants, ridiculously, to impress Caleb, to show that he’s just as responsible and capable as him.

“There’s a… circus in town?”

Caleb’s mouth opens once, then shuts in a frustrated pout, eyes narrowing to reassess the picture of Fjord in front of him. Unable to figure out this puzzle as Fjord’s impulses just keep adding more pieces to the board. Fjord is oblivious, busy mentally hitting himself for suggesting something so _stupid_. 

“Do you… want to go see the circus?” Caleb seems, as is becoming more common as he travels with Fjord, at a loss for words. 

“Well,” Fjord is panicking and it nearly breaks his careful maintenance of his accent, “I just thought that we might as well do something, I mean we’ve already paid for rooms for at least another night, and nothing else is really going on in town, and I’ve never been to a circus before but- We don’t have to go, if you think it’s a bad idea?”

The wheels in Caleb’s head are spinning visibly, attention redirected from Fjord’s general oddities to the question of a circus, what could go wrong, what could be gained. Fjord wishes Caleb would walk him through those calculations, teach Fjord to be more like him. 

“Whatever you want, Fjord.”

And with that, a simple, absent-minded admission, the two of them, one soaked in sea-water and the other covered in ash, venture forward into what they cannot know is the catalyst of their fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The circus, hmm?
> 
> I've always considered Fjord and Caleb's characters similar in odd ways- both have high charisma, both have strange relationships with magic, etc- but I wanted to see how their opposing ideologies of "touch everything" and "let's sit down and think about this" might influence and rub off on each other. They're a really fascinating pair, and I enjoy writing about them immensely. 
> 
> Exam week at my school, then I'll be travelling for summer vacation, so there will likely be significant delays in uploads for a couple of weeks! Sorry in advance about that, I'll try to get whatever work done I can so I can bring this fic to a satisfying end for y'all. Thanks for all the continued support, even as my upload schedule gets a little out of whack!


	15. Friends Are For Making Bad Decisions Together

**BEAU AND MOLLY**

Beau has never been so glad to see anyone in her life. Not her “friends” passing through town. Not that girl she had a summer fling with. Certainly not her mom or dad. Not even that really nice butler who used to sneak her extra cookies.

“I brought alcohol.”

Molly is the _best_.

Before she knows it, Beau is pulling Molly into a hug, defying her careful, well-practiced instincts of maintaining distance to protect herself from the sting of abandonment. It’s impulsive but not particularly surprising; Molly is always breaking down those barriers, encouraging Beau to tear down the walls she’s trapped herself behind and reassuring her that he’ll always stick around, even when times are tough.

The hug itself is awkward, of course; Beau rarely hugs people and Molly has _never_ hugged anyone, as far as he can remember. But that almost makes it more beautiful because this is the _best_ hug Molly has ever had, even if his horn nearly takes out Beau’s eye and Beau squeezes way too tight.

“Molly, you’re my best friend, do you know that?”

They’re standing around and kicking dirt on a random road, as stupid punks like them are prone to do. Their plan is to tail it as far away from Deastok, the monastery, and Beau’s parents as they can get, and get drunk as quickly as possible on the beer Molly stole for them in the process, which isn’t really a plan at all, but since when do they make functioning plans?

“Yup.”

Beau punches him the arm. “I’m not very good at this talking stuff, ok?”

“Given that I’ve only had a couple months of practice, I’d say you’re better than me, at least.” Molly rubs his arm and beams at her, relaxed tone slurred slightly by the contents of the bottle Beau should take from him before he gets carried away.

Beau scowls, frustrated with all these words and feelings. Molly keeps smiling, grin wider than should be able to fit on his face; he hasn’t stopped since Beau climbed through that window and they started running, and he doesn’t stop for the rest of their day hiking down boring dirt roads.

He doesn’t stop smiling, not even when they find a six foot dead snake laid across the road. Beau has to bite her tongue to suppress her concerns about the significance of them finding a _snake_ , of all things. Molly moves around it with no more than an offhanded “weird”, and Beau finds herself equally reluctant to break the lighthearted atmosphere of their escape.

With the rush of the monastery and Molly’s rescue mission, Beau’s mind hasn’t stopped spinning enough to think about the threat that hangs in her peripheral. There’s still too many questions she hasn’t been able to answer about what their encounter with dead snakes may mean for them, but she’s not sure she even wants to confront it, at the moment. Maybe she’ll talk to Molly about it later, work together to formulate some sort of plan going forward.

The thought almost makes her laugh at the absurdity of ever believing that _Molly_ , of all people, would be helpful in making plans.

She shakes her head once and studies the ground, forcing herself to forget about the snakes and address the only other thing on her mind. As her and Molly set up camp for the night, simply laying out their coats in the meager shelter of a lonely tree, she wills words to form in her brain and pushes them out of her mouth.

“I just want to say thank you. For everything.”

Molly's day-long smile changes, pulling up at the edges to be sharp and taunting, then abruptly softening and melting into the warmth of the happy, close moment they share under a tree in the middle of nowhere.

“Oh, hush. There's no need to be so formal, just buy me a drink the next time we have money.”

…

It’s long before they have money the next time they get a drink.

Molly had just finished helping Beau use his knife to cut apart her Cobalt Soul uniform, slicing off the bits she doesn’t like and stitching it all back together in an approximation of her style, taking inspiration from Molly’s patchwork coat and patchwork personality.

He also, with limited success, shaved her head in the most uneven undercut in all of Wildemount, giving up before bothering to trim any off the top. She looks a little bit like a mess and a little bit like a badass but mostly just like an idiot who let an impulsive tiefling edit her wardrobe.

The overall look may not be perfect, but it was freeing to be able to exercise some amount of control over the way she presents herself to the world, doing away with her mother’s strict rules for her hair length and the Cobalt Soul’s strict policies for uniforms. She can see now why Molly made the coat the way he did, taking control of his life and surrounding himself with things that make him happy. Even if the things that make him happy include a banner that was not meant to be adapted into clothing and scraps of stolen, mismatched fabric.

Beau used one of the strips of monk uniform to tie up her hair, taking a weight off of her shoulders. Then, she did the same for Molly’s hair, doing her best to gather the short, but quickly growing, curly strands into a tiny ponytail at his insistence. Molly is a little like an admiring sibling in that way, always mimicking her style, although he’d never admit it.

The makeovers were dumb, but not as dumb as the tattoos. The tattoos are infinitely stupider. 

The first sign of civilization Molly and Beau encountered was a run-down wooden shack at the edge of a cluster of other shacks, just outside of town. Attached to one of its partially broken, rotting walls is a large sheet of fraying fabric that stretches from the shack’s roof to a spike in the ground, creating a tent-like extension to the “building”.

Hanging lopsided over the doorway, a handmade sign with TATTOOS scrawled in red ink across it proclaims the shack’s purpose. It also makes the building look like somewhere a drunk, idiot tourist might go to die.

Molly and Beau were just about ready to walk past the shack, move on to greener pastures deeper in the town, but when they noticed another sign reading FREE in the same lettering, they realized that they _are_ drunk, idiot tourists who were going to get tattoos, whether or not their common sense told them not to.

Anybody who allows a random man in what basically amounts to a tent by the side of the road tattoo anything on their body for free is a dumbass, and Molly and Beau happily fit that description. The artist is a self-proclaimed amateur, at best- apparently honing their new craft on hapless idiots lured in by a FREE sign- but they’re free and Beau will be damned if they don’t take that opportunity.

And it comes with alcohol. The cheapest, _shittiest_ alcohol Beau has ever tasted. Presumably to dull the pain, or to make Molly keep demanding additions to his tattoo.

Molly has tattoos already, or, as he puts it, the person _before_ Molly had gotten tattoos already. Though, they're not really tattoos, it's just what they're calling them to avoid talking about how they can't be covered by more ink or that they glow sometimes or that they apparently make blood magic happen or that they're fucking _eyes_ all over his body.

Now, they’re creepy red eyes set in the heads of snakes winding down his right arm, starting between his shoulder blades.

"I can't believe you decided on fucking snakes."

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, amiright?"

"Are you _already_ drunk?"

He doesn't answer except to laugh hysterically in a way that only several bottles of terrible ale will produce. Molly, despite his bravado and enthusiasm, is a bit of a lightweight, which makes sense, considering he hasn’t had much experience drinking in the few months he’s been Molly. Their tattoo artist doesn't seem very pleased by the shaking but he doesn't comment, content to practice mediocre tattoos on some idiot travelers before he gets to paying customers with better taste deeper in the Empire.

He also doesn't complain about the increasingly complicated configuration of snakes needed to connect and draw around all the eyes, just meets the challenge with somewhat wobbly lines and lackluster detail. Beau doubts Molly will mind terribly, it’s not like they paid for this and Molly isn’t the type to get overly concerned about silly things like _details_.

"They look like snake eyes, anyway. Might as well make it seem intentional."

"You make a lot of poor decisions."

Molly props his head up on his left arm, looking up with a bewildered expression at Beau from his lower vantage point laying on his stomach on the wooden tattooing table.

"You're on the run from a monastery!"

"You're on the run from a dead guy!"

The tattooer looks up for just a second, realizing he’s trapped in the middle of a very strange conversation and that his partner, who tattooed Beau, is unable to save him as he is passed out in the shack beside them, bored of drunk people and weird, overheard stories. Neither Beau nor Molly look at him. They’re busy, glaring at each other like the warring siblings they’ve become.

Molly narrows his eyes at Beau, an expression she’s seen so many times it’s ceased being threatening, even if those solid red eyes are, objectively, terrifying. Beau frowns back, her face a warning for anyone else: get too close and you might get hit, but Molly has never been scared of her.

“I’m not running away.”

“Oh, _bullshit_ , you’re absolutely running away. You’re scared of what you’ll find if you stop and look.”

Molly sniffs and turns his head to side, almost knocking the tattooer’s hand off course. “I’m not scared of _anything_.”

Beau laughs and glances up to meet the tattoo artist’s eyes, assessing for a threat until she says something that could get them arrested. He doesn’t seem particularly disturbed by their conversation and Beau has to wonder what the other lunatics requesting tattoos on the side of the road could possibly have discussed that was stranger than dead people and blood magic.

To his credit, the artist has proven himself exceptional considering that he’s an apprentice dealing with odd designs, Molly’s constant squirming, and having to do it all in a tent. He’s done a damn good job, as far as Beau is concerned. Or maybe she isn’t sober enough to tell.

The snakes with their glowing red eyes are mostly finished by the end of the day, clearly rushed but decent looking. Molly will have to get another artist to perfect some of the details and color, but the framework is certainly there. Their artist for the day seems relieved to finally kick them out, leaving them to fend for themselves as they attempt to keep their new tattoos clean while sleeping on the side of the road, under the stars that started peeking out hours into Molly’s tattoo.

The snakes are as varied as the artist could manage- winding in different patterns and colors with anatomy that likely wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny. There’s lots of heavy blacks and greys made to stick out against Molly’s skin, but a few are decorated with vibrant, clashing colors. The one that extends to the back of Molly’s hand is a familiar, sickly green, sparking memories of Tracy.

Beau may be willfully ignorant, but she isn’t naïve. She knows that one encounter with an undead snake person will not be the last of their troubles. She knows that scent of rot and the scattering of scales in her room in Kamordah wasn’t a silly coincidence. She knows that the dead snake they found in the road yesterday could be a sign of things to come.

She knows that even if Molly is content to let the mystery die and keep outrunning a target they haven’t _really_ seen yet, she never will be. She knows they’ve probably gotten lucky, that, as soon as they stop to breathe, the things they’ve left behind will be eager to sneak up on them.

Beau shakes her head, pushing thoughts of potential, faraway threats out of her mind and re-focusing on the present.

Regardless of any other meaning it may hold, the tattoo is interesting enough. It's satisfactory for Molly’s purposes of adding another experience to catch up to a lifetime he can’t remember, a lifetime taken from him by a stranger and a grave.

Beau’s tattoo, a massive eye that spans between her shoulder blades, isn’t as complicated as Molly’s intertwined snakes but it’s still pretty cool, even with the slightly oval-ish pupil. She won’t admit it’s a symbol of Ioun, even if Molly knows and has been subtly, at least for him, trying to encourage her pursuits of knowledge.

Even before the Cobalt Soul she’d been interested in the Mistress, and her ideas of learning and teaching, but after the Cobalt Soul, she’s even more determined to learn, her way. Beau hated the monks’ way hoarding pointless histories and resented them for her captivity, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped wanting to _know_ things, relevant, _useful_ things. She may not be confident in her worship of Ioun, or really sure of what the goddess means to her, but she knows that she won’t let the monks sour her interests in knowledge.

She’s a little surprised with herself that she actually went through with the eye, but she’s even more surprised that Molly went with the snakes.

Beau would’ve assumed, based on the way Molly rejects most notions of his past, that he would have wanted to camouflage the eyes, hide them in the background of a different tattoo. Certainly not make them the focal point, the striking pop of color in the twisting creatures. With this tattoo, Molly makes the oddness of his previous life a part of him and manipulates it to reclaim it as his own, instead of burying it in the grave of his empty memory.

She should've known because that’s how Molly has always likes to do things: taking the bits he thinks are good and leaving behind all the rest. The powers, the tattoos, and the mystery he’ll embrace, “stealing” them for himself and his own intentions, but the man himself, the grave, and the people he once knew he refuses to learn about.

Molly is funny like that, at once fluid like the twisting, tangled snakes and stubborn as the ink sunk into his skin.

“Doesn’t it bother you? You have to be dying to know, right?”

“Nope!” Molly grins that conman smile, as if coaxing you into a bad deal. He learned it from Beau, though she refuses to admit it’s like looking in a mirror.

“You don’t have to be like him,” Beau bites her lip, surprising her irrational irritation at the thought of just _not knowing_ something so important, “You could just find out, for curiosity’s sake.”

“I don’t want to dip my toes in that shit, Beau. I think if I look I’ll—“ Molly stops, unsure.

Beau’s face softens, the shift imperceptible to anyone but Molly. “You think you’ll become more like him if you remember?”

“Maybe.” There are those eyes, so filled with emotion despite the even, blood-red tone.

Beau sighs and leans against Molly, careful to avoid the sore spots on his arm and back from the tattoos.

“I guess I just think it’s important to _know_ stuff. It can help you, you know, figure things out. Like,” She sits up straighter, turning to look at Molly directly, “I know my past. I carry my shit with me, the dad, the crimes, the monk stuff. All of it. And I use it as tool to define my future and change it so it’s different from my past mistakes.”

“But that’s not _blood magic_.” Molly’s nose scrunches up, reminiscent of an irritated cat.

“I know it’s not the blood magic that bothers you, Molly.”

Molly shifts and squints back at Beau, not surprised but unnerved, even after all these years. “I still don’t know how you read people like that.”

Beau smirks and lowers herself to the ground, propping herself up on her elbows and looking up at Molly as he moves to lay beside her.

“You’re as good at it as me, you just don’t care to do it as much. Now,” Beau’s head rests in the crook of her elbow and she angles it up to look Molly in the eyes, “tell me what’s really up.”

Molly snuggles closer to Beau, his warm blood serving as her personal heat source in the cold night. “I guess I am a _little_ scared.”

“Oh?” Beau raises an eyebrow, teeth bared in a grin that shines in the moonlight.

“Shut up. I have,” Molly bites his lip and nearly draws blood with his sharp teeth, “nightmares sometimes. About him. Uh, Lucien, I guess.”

Beau hums, contemplating. She’s seen Molly jolting awake late at night, heard him talk in the dark hours of morning when he is more susceptible to secret-sharing. Carefully revealing facts, but never telling her how he really feels about them.

“He’s got all this shit going on that I _really_ don’t want to be mixed up in. I mean, rituals, scars, graves. Too much baggage, it’s not me. It’s not something I would ever choose to do now. I have better things to be doing, more things to see than just weird magic.”

His eyes twinkle, the wanderlust of a child shining in them. He has so much more to do in this second life, so much more to take from the world. Beau doesn’t want to spoil that, but she can’t help wanting to know, wanting to understand where Molly came from and how he decided who he is now.

“How do you know? You still use the magic, still don’t mind doing shady things. Where do you draw the line, what separates you from him?”

“I just go by impulse. Things that I like, I like. I like using magic. I don’t mind certain crimes. But I also like shiny things and talking to people and _normal_ things. I suppose,” he looks at Beau, face honest and open, “the main thing that’s different, that I _know_ is different, is that Lucien would never have been friends with you. I don’t want to be someone who isn’t friends with you, who lets some silly magic rituals get in the way of the things that life needs to live.”

Looking at Molly, Beau sees her best friend, the person she shares everything with, the person who steals banners and gets high with strangers, the person who considers trying new foods or doing Beau’s hair the highlight of his life. But if she takes a step back she knows she’ll only see a scarred tiefling with ominous tattoos and a propensity for illegal magic.

Beau knows, looking at herself, that she is powerful enough to break free of society’s binds and carve her own path, that she’s doing that now, with a friend. But if she looks at the bigger picture, considers herself from an outsider’s perspective, she knows that the world sees a rebel still stuck the uniformed shadow of a stiff upbringing, monk clothes on her body and a library’s worth of information in her head.

They’re defying the fates set before them and yet they’re still walking down that well-traveled road, embodying their archetypes while praising their uniqueness.

She thinks that she’ll eventually give in without meaning to, that “fate”, if it does exist, will eventually lead her to a future she wouldn’t pick now. But this moment, talking quietly to Molly with a new tattoo adorning her back, feels like a divergence, something that was not planned for her.

Beau will do everything to get the futures they deserve, whether or not it adheres to “fate”.

For now, Beau will just lean against Molly, staring up at the stars shining down on the wide road, seemingly shining down on them specifically, highlighting their path.

“Well,” Beau pauses, trying to untangle the web of thoughts she’s trapped herself in, “I’m glad I’m the one you stumbled upon.”

Molly grins, all sharp teeth and soft happiness.

“Me too.”

…

“A circus?”

“Yes!” Molly’s fangs gleam in the early morning light, sharp joy breaking across a face that was made to be scary. “We’ve been meaning to go into town anyway, we can’t miss this!”

“Yeah, I mean I guess it could be cool.”

“I’ve never been to a circus before, Beau.”

There’s a bubble of unsaid thoughts that Beau can practically hear behind those words, greedy grasping for more, more, more of this world. There’s something in Molly’s energy that Beau always sees clearly in these moments, where he demands an equal trade, compensation, from a world that seems to have dealt him such a shitty hand. He wants to make the most of this second life, but if the world isn’t feeling generous, he’ll just take what he wants.

Something tells her that attitude may have rubbed off on him from his time amongst criminals, but whether or not that’s true, Beau can’t help but be proud that Molly has grown confident enough to get what he wants, what he deserves. He’s come a long way from the timid, mute tiefling she first met.

Give Molly nightmares, scars and amnesia, and he’ll take a friend, tattoos and a circus.

Molly’s grin widens impossibly, stretching the limits for his face. It’s natural for Beau to see such an expression, that smile he learned so early on, but she imagines that this life is the first showcase of the feature, ill-fit for the world of blood magic. She finds herself, for once, taking Molly’s side on the whole Lucien situation.

She wants to see more of Molly and less of Lucien. She hopes a visit to the circus will grant that wish.

Beau grabs Molly’s hand and looks up at him, eyes surveying the patchwork coat and growing hair, diving deep into the depths of greed, wonder and unfailing trust she imagines make up his mind.

Hand in hand, two rebels run towards the destination fate has chosen for them. Here, now, they may comply with what lady fate has in mind, but there’s an unexpected sharpness to Molly’s eyes this time around and an unforeseen sureness to Beau’s feet.

“To the circus!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Finally_ got this chapter done! Sorry for the delay, I had exams, then travel, then some other life stuff-- it's been crazy! I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, so thanks for your patience! 
> 
> More content with our favorite pseudo-siblings, Molly and Beau. I'm glad that this canon divergence gives me a chance to really enhance the warring sibling-esque relationship they had in the show. 
> 
> Stay tuned for another update, hopefully soon!


	16. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

**THE GALS**

Nott is fine. Jester always makes sure of that. Despite all those grumbles about spells, Nott has the utmost confidence in Jester to do whatever it takes to keep her friends happy and healthy, just as Nott is willing to do for her. 

Her friend. Maybe more, maybe her _family_ , but they haven’t known each other long enough for that, have they? It probably doesn’t matter; she’ll always protect Jester, acting as an extension of her mother, regardless of whether they ever call themselves family.

Nott knows, more or less, how she feels about Jester but she’s not sure where Yasha factors into that relationship. 

On one hand, Yasha has hurt Jester’s feelings. A friend wouldn’t disappear without a real explanation, without leaving them any way of knowing if she was _really_ coming back, and Nott isn’t sure Jester has the constitution to stand up to treatment like that, too eager to keep the peace and insist they’re all very good friends, in spite of evidence to the contrary. That may leave Nott to step up and insist that Yasha explain herself. 

On the other hand, Nott doesn’t want to rain on Jester’s parade. Jester was so delighted to see Yasha return and bring the original little trio back together that Nott couldn’t bear to break up that happy picture. It may be best to just leave things be and let Jester believe in whatever goodness she sees in Yasha, whether or not it’s true.

To complicate things further, Nott would be lying if she said she wasn’t at least a teensy bit jealous that Yasha is getting all Jester’s attention after coming back from a weeks long disappearance. What did Yasha do to deserve Jester’s concentrated cheer except save their lives by transforming into a terrifying angel thing _one_ time?

"Do you know where Yasha is?"

Nott looks up in disbelief at the question, Jester having just burst into their room with her arms filled with pastries and her eyes filled with something she's pretending aren't tears. 

Nott bites her lip, determined to quell her anger at the idea that Yasha might be gone _again_ , after less than a day in their company. She doesn't want to stir Jester into more of a panic.

"No? I thought she was with you?"

Jester grabs Nott’s hand, pulling her out the doorway with more force than necessary, her strength uncontrolled as her frantic energy takes over. 

"We have to go find her!"

...

Yasha is fine. She just doesn't know what she's doing. 

She’s chasing storms and visions because she knows she has to, knows she _should_ , but she’s got nothing sticking her to the ground, nothing to keep her from being carried off in the wind of a storm or the currents of blood from her sword. Nothing, no friends or family or… or _lover_. No job. No home.

Nothing except, maybe, Jester’s kind, trusting smile and Nott’s distrustful, but honest, stare. 

She refuses to admit to the Stormlord or herself, but she is very lonely. She’s been lonely for a very long time. 

Maybe that’s why she’s back here, trying to make things right, though she can’t help but fear that she’s screwed it all up again by exposing her, well, her true _nature_.

Here in this hidden alcove, crouched ridiculously under a ledge near one of Trostenwald’s endless fields, Yasha is running away again. She buries her head in her arms, not sure what she’s supposed to do. Whether she should be here at all, whether it’s cruel to come back to Jester, so cheerful and so trusting, after leaving so suddenly. Whether they’ll forgive her for leaving them like she leaves everyone, or if she _should_ be forgiven.

“Ah-ha! There you are!” Rounding the corner, Jester smiles down at Yasha, as if they’re talking after mere hours apart instead of weeks, and plops down beside her.

Yasha lifts her head, hastily wiping her face and putting on a neutral expression.

“Jester, I-“

“Oh, so you did find her.” Nott trails just behind Jester, seeming less than thrilled to see her but not exactly antagonistic, at least. She sits down, pointedly, next to Jester.

“What are you doing here? Are you ok? Are you sad? Oh no, did we- I mean did you want to be alone?”

“No, no, Jester it’s ok. I just, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me. After I left. And everything.”

Yasha looks down at her hands, studying the familiar calluses and scars and feeling shame bubble up again, renewed under Jester’s wide-eyed stare. A blue hand enters her field of vision, covering her hand in Jester’s warm, soft grip. She looks up, meeting Jester’s worried gaze.

“What? Yasha, _of course_ I wanted to see you, I brought all these pastries and everything- we could catch up over drinks! Nott says they have the best whiskey here and- Yasha, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Jester, nothing.” Her makeup is going to be a mess with all these tears, how embarrassing.

“Yasha, you can tell us,” Nott leans a little over Jester, putting aside whatever resentment she has and trying to make eye contact with Yasha, “We don’t want you to be sad.”

A sniveling, teary-eyed barbarian that towers over them, even when sitting, must be quite the sight, but Yasha has already dug this hole; in for a copper, in for a gold, as they say.

“I’m sorry, guys. I shouldn’t have left you. You’re like, my only friends.”

“Oh, Yasha.”

Jester smiles that sweet smile that makes Yasha feel at home, feel safe, feel like, even though she barely knows her, she could spill her soul to Jester, give her soul over for safekeeping in Jester's warm, soft, blue hands. And Nott, Nott just looks at her, with that intimidating, critical gaze, but Yasha knows she means well and the knowledge that the little goblin is looking out for her wraps around Yasha like a layer of armor.

“You know what this means?” Jester claps her hands together and the gesture shrikes Yasha as familiar, even after only seeing it a handful of times, “We should have a girls’ night! We’ll talk about our feelings and our secrets and we’ll do our hair and our nails! I just bought this wonderful paint-“

Yasha snags eye contact with Nott for a brief moment of commiseration. After everything, they can still share this, this moment of being totally out of depth with Jester’s energy. What have they gotten themselves into?

…

“Yasha, how long has it been since you’ve brushed your hair? It’s all dirty, you should take better care of it,” Jester studies Yasha’s face, looking for any hints she can get. This girl is a tough nut to crack, but she’s _sure_ she’ll get her to open up by the end of the night.

“Well, I,” Yasha bites her lip, her usual warning sign for incoming personal information, “Zuala used to do it for me, but. She’s not around anymore.”

“Who?” Nott’s voice croaks out nearby, acting fast as Jester’s partner in sleuthing out Yasha’s story.

“My wife. She’s dead.”

There’s tense silence when Jester doesn’t respond, just keeps brushing through Yasha's hair slowly, gently tugging the tangled strands free from what used to be well-maintained braids. Nott fidgets beside her, unsure what to say. Yasha hunches her shoulders, realizing she’s lapsed much farther in the comfortable ease of secret-sharing than she intended to.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring down the mood.”

“No, it’s ok! I’m sorry about Zuala, she sounds lovely,” Jester pauses in her motions, leaning around Yasha to look her in the eyes, “I mean, it’s a beautiful name and she _must_ be lovely, since she was with you. I can’t imagine you loving anyone but lovely people.”

Yasha hums, closing her eyes in a moment of thought, too quiet to tell whether it’s sad or peaceful. “Have you ever been in love, Jester?”

“Me? No, well, I had,” Jester concentrates on the braid she’s started, flustered now, “a rather sheltered childhood. What about you, Nott?”

Like ripples in a pond, Jester’s awkward shuffling immediately shifts over to the goblin. “I… was also married once. It’s a long story. But Jester, I’m more interested to know where you grew up? Why were you so sheltered?”

Drat. Misdirection _always_ backfires. 

“Um, well! My mom is a, uh, a lady of the night and she didn’t want anyone to know she had a kid, so I sort of just stayed in my room!”

Everybody stops, even as Jester furiously continues braiding Yasha’s hair, tugging a little harder than she should, though Yasha doesn’t seem to notice.

“So,” Nott begins, taking up her role as the default conversation starter in the narrow race between her and Yasha, “Did you… have a bad childhood? Did you have any friends? Or _ever_ go outside?”

“Oh, no, I had a great childhood! My mom is wonderful, I miss her so much, and we are the bestest friends, I talked to her all the time when she wasn’t working. The Traveler was my only other friend, but he always kept me company and gave me drawing ideas, and, sometimes, he would help me unlock doors to cause mischief! It was very fun.” 

Yasha smiles, readily latching onto this new topic and attempting to remedy the tension they’ve managed to create.

“It’s nice that you have such a good relationship with your god. I… I kind of wish it was like that with the Stormlord, but I’m working on it. I can see why your god is so important to you.”

“Is that why you left?” Jester’s voice is quiet, reluctant to bring up a potentially sore topic.

“Yes. I… he had a mission for me. And I sort of owe it to him, so. Yeah.”

Nott is glancing between Yasha and Jester, a little lost with all this god talk. “You owe it to him?”

“Yes. He saved me,” she doesn’t move her head, not wanting to mess up Jester’s work, but casts her eyes down, “When I had lost my way.”

“Is that why you have the massive skeletal wings?”

Jester winces at Nott’s blunt words, scared that she’ll push too far and cause Yasha to close off completely. But Yasha doesn’t seem to mind, relaxed now as they’ve started this flow of speaking freely, getting to know each other at a rapid, yet casual, pace. 

“I think so. Sort of. I’m sorry, I should’ve just told you, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it.”

“Well,” Jester looks at Nott, pressed against her side and staring with urging eyes, “I was very sad, when you left. I thought you’d abandoned us because I said something wrong, or you just didn’t like me very much.”

Jester pauses, finally bringing all those feelings she’d been pushing to side up to the surface. She looks up again, smiling bright as ever, maybe even _brighter_ now that she’s moved all those sad things out of her head and into the light, where they can deal with them together.

”I wished you’d told me, I would’ve understood! If the Traveler asked me to go anywhere, I’d go too,” she takes Yasha’s hand, squeezing reassuringly, “But don’t worry, I forgive you!”

“And I promise to tell you, if it ever comes up again.” Yasha squeezes Jester’s hand back, matching her strength.

It seems like such a tiny step, but it makes Jester grin and Nott relax, the protective tension easing from her shoulders. It feels like a weight off Jester’s shoulders too, fulfilling Nott's quiet pushes for Jester to say what she thinks and freeing her from the toxic drain of hidden resentments. In moments like these, Nott is a mom away from home, encouraging her to express her feelings and take as much time for her own problems as she does for her friends'.

“Ok, Yasha your hair is done! It’s your turn now, Nott! Come here, I’ll give you a big braid!”

Jester is able to truly relax, at last, as she goes through the motions of braiding, brushing and weaving, strand over strand.

Nott gradually softens as Jester falls into a pattern, her hands moving through Nott's hair with precision and efficiency. She glances sideways, looking at Jester without moving her head, and asks, "Where did you learn to style hair?"

“My mom taught me how to do hair and let me practice with hers," she laughs, remembering her earliest attempts at a braid, "I was so bad, at first, but she never told me, just let me keep practicing and practicing.”

She studies Nott as she goes, equally as curious to learn more about her as she is to learn about Yasha, even if she’s had much more time to figure Nott out. It hasn’t escaped her that Nott seems to stealthily avoid personal questions in every conversation, dodging words like strikes on a battlefield.

It’s because of her careful observation that she notices Nott’s head dip at every mention of her mother, tilting downward, almost... ashamed? Regretful? Jester isn’t sure. It’s hard to tell, even with Nott’s usually easy to read face. Her mom would probably be able to tell, she's always been good at knowing what people want, what they need to be happy.

Maybe it’s that her attention is divided- she’s still trying to watch Yasha, trying to figure out if this secret sharing has been a help or a hindrance. It’s difficult to tell, but Yasha at least doesn’t seem distressed as she pushes around the little bottles of paint Jester laid out. No, she’s actually _smiling_. Smiling, imagine that. She never thought she’d get Yasha, the stern barbarian, to smile, without even making a joke.

“This is a pretty color,” Yasha is mumbling as she picks up paints, too shy to directly ask for the one she wants.

Jester looks over, putting the last tie in Nott’s hair.

“It _is_ a very pretty color! Oh, Yasha, it’ll match your eyes!”

_This is going to be great._

…

"You were married?"

"Yes. Still married, but it's... complicated."

Yasha just hums, staring straight ahead. Nott doesn’t know _how_ to talk to her, only that she’s supposed to. It would be cruel to just leave her as is, looking so lonely even when sitting directly beside Nott.

"What," Nott swallows, not sure if this is right, "what was she like? Your wife?"

Yasha shifts, tilting her head up towards the horizon, clear and sunny today. The sun doesn't reflect in her eyes, leaving them just as dark and stormy as they always are.

"She was... wonderful. So positive and strong, always fighting for what she believed in, even if it meant she'd die for it," Yasha chuckles, humorless, "Jester sort of reminds me of her. It's like... it's like she's here with me. Like she's using you guys to protect me from beyond the veil. Does that make any sense?"

Nott grabs Yasha's hand, staring at her until she's forced to look down and meet Nott's gaze. A trick she learned from Jester.

"Of course it does. I'm honored that you think so highly of us, of _me_. And, for what it's worth, I want to do everything I can, on Zuala's behalf and because I'm your friend, to protect you." Nott's eyes, those big yellow ones she's hated for so long, are filled with love and power, as if commanding Yasha to be comforted.

Yasha uses the hand Nott isn't holding to wipe her eyes, filled with tears _again_. On instinct, or habit learned from Jester, Nott hugs her, stretching her short arms as far as they can go around Yasha’s broad shoulders that shake with silent sobs.

Nott hums quietly under her breath, subconsciously invoking the same tune she'd use whenever Luc woke up with nightmares. Trying her hardest to calm and ease a hurt that can never be truly healed, no matter how much Nott wishes it could.

Yasha sniffs and straightens, prompting Nott to sit back and give her more space to collect herself. There’s a lengthy awkward silence wherein Nott rifles through her bag, trying to look busy, and Yasha dries her face. Finally, Yasha stills and Nott looks up, inspiration striking her.

"Oh! I almost forgot," Nott digs into her bag and pulls out a rumpled wad of flowers, "I, uh, stole these for you. I figured, you know, everybody likes flowers. They smell nice and they always seem to make people feel a little better, so maybe- are you ok?"

Yasha is trying so hard to hold back another round of tears that the strain shows on her face, making it a little red and almost angry. She takes a deep breath and, as Nott looks on with a mixture of horror and amazement, seems to reabsorb the tears, exhaling the strangled remains of a sob with a sigh.

"I'm ok, I'm ok, it's just- there's no flowers where I'm from and I always," she takes the flowers, holding them with impossible care, as if they'll fall apart if she breathes on them wrong, "I always wanted to bring some back. To Zuala."

Nott nods, somber as she stares at the sky with Yasha. She imagines she can see the place Yasha is from, a dark spot on the horizon. Of course, it's much too far away for that to be possible, but it’s a nice thought.

"Are you, uh, from Xhorhas?"

"Yeah. Sort of let it slip, didn't realize how little wiggle room I had when I gave out the location like that."

"What's it like up there?"

"Dark. Cold. Violent."

Nott just nods, unable to follow that up with anything. She swings her feet back and forth, not even brushing the ground from the ledge they sit on. Yasha, with her height, has no choice but to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground and seems almost jealous she can't shake out her nervous energy the same way. She picks absentmindedly at her fingernails, painted in alternating patterns of blue and purple, matching her eyes.

"It's, uh, got a lot of people like you. Goblins, I mean. Doing their own business. It’s different from the Empire, up in Xhorhas they're just... people." 

Nott nods, bowing her head. She can't get angry or upset unless she wants to spill the beans and she _does not_ want to spill the beans. Especially not to Yasha. _Maybe_ to Jester, but that's for another day.

"There a lot of humans in Xhorhas?"

"No."

"Are you human?"

"I don’t think so. Maybe."

"Ok. Great."

There's a beat of silence, and then another few seconds and then- Yasha laughs. It's a booming, powerful, contagious thing, sending Nott into a fit of giggles next to her. And there they are, just two complicated, but weirdly similar, people in the odd family of three they've built. Grieving mother and grieving wife, lost in a sea of self-exploration and acceptance.

…

Nott looks down her claw-like nails, long and pointed and so vicious looking. Or, normally vicious looking, now rendered totally innocuous under a layer of bright yellow paint.

She’ll admit, it feels good to have all these new, nice things: the beautifully painted nails, the silky fabric Jester bought to replace her bandages and the new cloak that’s still dark and inconspicuous but much cleaner. It makes her body feel a lot less like a prison and a little more like the pretty thing Jester is always telling her it is.

Her nails nearly blend in with the bright colors on the flyer she grasps, atrocious neons catching her eyes and demanding she direct her attention to the new best thing in this tiny town: a circus. An actual circus, in rundown, zombie-infested Trostenwald, right now.

They _have_ to go, right?

It’ll be the perfect opportunity for all of them to get closer as new friends. Get a little closer to that tenuous, ridiculous idea of family that seems painfully far and uncomfortably near all at once.

They’ve already been making so much progress, not just with each other but with _themselves_. Jester is finally talking about herself, not just caring obsessively about others. Yasha is finally talking about herself, even if she feels like she doesn’t want to, and feeling better afterwards.

Nott can see the glow in both of them as they share their pain and joy, overcome obstacles and celebrate victories, account for their weaknesses and support their strengths. She’s so proud, and now she’s sure she’ll do anything to protect this thing- friendship, team, _family_ \- they have going.

It’s time for Nott to step up to the plate and be the one to plan something, instead of letting Jester have the constant burden of finding the next fun thing to do. Nott has found them something normal to do for once, before Jester can convince Yasha to go zombie hunting.

Plus, she really wants to see all the shiny stuff she could pick up at a circus. It’s been so long since she’s built up a collection and the tiny pouch of stolen trinkets is just not enough for her.

“Jester, Yasha! Look where we’re going tonight!”

Three threads-blue, green, and grey- are woven together into a fabric sturdier than intended, intertwined by more than simple convenience.

They are stronger together than they may have been as dissonant parts, but just as blind to their fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our precious gals are finally bonding properly!
> 
> I really love writing the gals’ friendship, they’re just so soft and good for each other.


	17. Ever Think About Running Away To The Circus?

**CADUCEUS**

Caduceus has been following signs for a _very_ long time. If not for the dreams, if not for the faith he's been holding onto for too long to let go now, if not for his determination to find _answers_ , if not for the fact that he's sort of stranded now, he may have given up when he discovered his next destination would be the circus. 

He may have given up when he felt the words of the flyer spark something in him, heard them resonate in his dreams and alert him to something dark hiding within the tourist attraction, something that requires his attention. He would have given up when he realized what a strange sign he’d been given, if he wasn’t completely confident in the plan and _sure_ that it would all come together in the end, when he finds what he truly needs to save what can be saved. 

Some would call Caduceus stupid or naive or blind for following this path for so long and along so many ridiculous turns, guided by far-fetched signs. Some would call him desperate, or in too deep. 

Some _might_ be right, but Caduceus has a plan and he can't waver now. Not when he's worked so hard, not when he's gone so far. Not when his family is missing and his home is dying and he _knows_ that it has to be him to save it. 

He’s been chosen to help end this and he intends to succeed in his task. Even now, he feels waves of… _something_ , emanating from the ground and the air, choking life and halting the natural flow of all things. There’s a force seeping through the cracks in the immaterial between the planes and it’s killing his forest, corrupting the living, and pulling dark things from the holes they were never meant to leave. 

Caduceus will help, he knows he will. It’s why he’s been sent here, why he’s seen all those signs. 

He knows the Wildmother is looking out for him and he knows She will show him the way. 

He just prays that Her plan does not include the circus for very long. 

It’s not that the circus is a terrible thing. From the audience’s perspective, it’s undeniably delightful; the acts are beautiful and strange, the people are charming, and the atmosphere is freeing, unrestricted by the normal rules of polite society. The circus serves as a stage and safe haven for the freaks of the world, a place where they can free themselves from the shackles society has bound them in, and use their talents to earn a bit of coin. 

The circus is certainly appealing to _some_ , but that group does not include Caduceus, who has never been one for freedom and uncertainty. He much prefers a steady environment, one that he can understand if not control, one that does not change beyond what is natural. He'll do what he has to do to maintain that environment, his home, even if it means leaving it altogether. 

Even if it means leaving it for the _circus_. 

Caduceus settles himself at a table in the tavern across the street from where the circus is setting up, grabbing a glass of water and a window seat. He’s observing and thinking, two things he spends most of his time doing these days, despite being absolutely abysmal at maintaining focus on at least one of those things. 

A deep blue tent is slowly rising up from the previously empty field beside the lake and a few of the workers are splitting off from the construction, walking down the road with flyers in hand. They’re stopping people on the street to hand them out, talking with their hands and doing everything in their power to get people excited about their show, even if the persuasion comes off as more than a little forced. 

Caduceus’ eyes catch on the various advertisers, identifying each of them and making guesses about their roles in the circus, but his attention quickly diverts to the posters. He’s already seen them, of course; they’re everywhere, pasted on any available surface, from tavern walls to lantern posts lining the streets. They certainly don’t _seem_ like much, colorful pieces of paper meant to catch people’s attention with buzzwords like “life-changing” and “wonders beyond imagination”, but Caduceus knows they’re more than that. 

Something just beyond the words themselves inspires Caduceus, striking an unidentifiable cord in the back of his head. He’s not sure how he would describe the feeling he gets from the posters, just an inexplicable sense that they are somehow important. They appear more vivid than the rest of his surroundings, as if the Wildmother herself is highlighting them for Caduceus, pointing a giant arrow that says “look here!”. 

He tears himself away from the posters, trying to clear his head again and refocus himself on the path. The carnival performers are nearing the tavern, briefly stopping to sell their act to a small group on the street- a halfling, tiefling, and human. Caduceus frowns as he watches them work, dreading the thought of joining them. 

Caduceus knows, can figure just by observing from afar, that the circus is not magical from behind the curtain. It is a rushed, scrambling thing, constantly planning its next act, next destination, and next person to swindle. Everyone must pay their keep, pulling in money any way they can, whether it's with a song, a dance, persuading words, or dexterous hands. 

Which means that Caduceus has to find a way to make himself useful, or his plans to travel alongside them will be dead before they can even begin. 

He shifts uncomfortably in his chair- partially at the thought of failing and partially due to the chair being far too small- and stares down at his water glass, as if it will have all the answers.

There _is_ one way to support the circus from behind the scenes, if he’d rather not plunge directly into the spotlight. Thievery is rampant amongst large crowds of otherwise enthralled audience members and a good bit of lying is essential to advertising these sorts of things. 

It is not Caduceus' nature to cheat or steal, but he is no fool- he's learned quickly on the road and has taken his place as just another link in the vicious chain of nature, taking what he needs to survive. 

Still, understanding and willingness do not make a good thief. Even disguised, Caduceus cannot have the compact, lithe form of a good rogue or make his hands, built for digging graves and brewing tea, more compatible for delicate tools or small pockets. He is heavy, looming and altogether makes too much of an impression.

So that strikes the shadier portion of the circus from his options. 

It is also not Caduceus' nature to perform. He's not shy or lacking in confidence, but he knows his abilities well and knows that they do not include singing or dancing. Just _imagining_ himself attempting to walk across a tightrope or contort his limbs is almost painful. 

It is, however, Caduceus' nature to read people, and reading people is the only sort of reading one will ever do at a circus. There could be all sorts of use for someone who understands people as deeply as Caduceus does from a mere glance, perhaps that will be what sells the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities on letting him on board.

He hopes so, anyway. 

A flyer slides into his vision, held up by the thin, elven hand of Gustav Fletching, leader and face-man of the carnival. 

"Looking for a sign, traveler? Well, let this be yours! The Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities is performing tonight, come claim a seat, it may just change your life!" 

Gustav's words fade out as Caduceus takes the flyer, absorbed again in his own thoughts as he reconsiders whether this _could_ be a sign, whether this marketing is simply a coincidence, whether the Wildmother would really choose _this_ for his next stop. 

No, no, he must remain focused. Of course this is his sign. 

If this isn’t his sign, then what else could it be? Where else is he met to go, in this dead end town?

_Of course_ this is a sign. 

Gustav winks at Caduceus, counting on him taking the bait, though he can't possibly know the implications of his words. 

He can't possibly know that Caduceus will show up early, the day before the show, but he _can_ make it look like he knew. Gustav is always put together, always prepared for the unexpected, always charming no matter what form his customers take. 

Even if that form is a hulking, pastel firbolg barging clumsily into his tent as various workers skitter out of his way, startled by the presence of a guest behind the scenes. Caduceus doesn’t seem bothered by the glaring carnies, not even looking at them as he makes his way towards Gustav with his hand out to shake. 

"Gustav, is it?"

Gustav takes his hand, trying valiantly to keep the awe from his face as he stares up at Caduceus’ truly intimidating height, different when they’re just a foot apart. He almost manages it. 

"That's right. What brings you here so early, friend? Eager to see what the circus has in store for you?" Gustav takes a step into Caduceus' space, hoping the intimacy will bring his attention in even closer, "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I promise it will be much better if we have the chance to set up first."

"Thanks for the advice, but I'm actually here to see if you have any, uh, vacancies," Caduceus pauses and smiles at Gustav for extra points, everyone likes a nice smile, "I'm hoping to do some travelling and, well, you all are just fascinating. You've piqued my interest." 

Gustav smiles back, a showman's grin, as much for making Caduceus feel special as it is for conveying something to the audience of carnies around him. The smile turns conspiratory in the next moment, like that of a salesman offering the deal of the lifetime to the 17th person that day. 

"It is always good to have company when travelling, eh? Come, we will discuss this further in my tent."

...

"So, Mr. Clay, do you have an act in mind? What is your talent- can you sing, dance, or play an instrument? Or is there… some other way you’d like to help the circus?" As he talks, Gustav carefully pours tea for the two of them, sitting cross-legged at the low table on the floor of his tent. 

"I don't have any experience performing, really." 

It'll take Caduceus a minute to collect his thoughts as they slowly roll in, carefully considering his response and filtering out the irrelevant observations that bubble up. Caduceus waits patiently, used to his own processing time. 

Gustav, on the other hand, is not. "Friend, you must have something to add to the circus. It's not a free ride, you know, as much as I like you—"

"I am fairly good with people, I suppose." Caduceus takes a long sip from his tea, watching and waiting to see how that goes over. 

If Gustav is off put by the sudden inspiration, he doesn't show it. He’s accustomed to dealing with interesting characters and tougher personalities than Caduceus’ airhead. 

"Good how?" 

"Well, let's take you for example,” Caduceus leans forward, studying Gustav’s face, and Gustav shifts, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, “You're running from something. Something much more dangerous than a crime or an unpleasant person. It's trapping you here, in this cycle of travelling and performing."

Caduceus sits back, lowering his teacup enough for Gustav to see his sad frown, eyebrows drawn in with worry at the revelations about the circus manager that seem to unravel before him. “I’d recommend a more direct approach. This problem isn’t just going to get tired and give up, you know.”

The delicate twitches of a person's face and their subtle changes in expression are lost on many, but for Caduceus they tell a tale, subconsciously informing him about a person without him knowing quite _how_ he knows, just that he _does_. 

Gustav's face transforms in the chorus of a song that plays through Caduceus' head, a short journey of alarm, relief, and delight. Beyond that, Caduceus knows what's going through Gustav's head, knows like he knows his own thoughts. 

When Caduceus’ words hit a nerve with Gustav, his whole body pulls taunt, as if pulled up on a puppet’s strings. But _they’re alone and his secrets are safe_ so he relaxes, body and face melting back into the casual façade he’s created for their little meeting. His eyes widen marginally as he thinks of the possibilities for a talent like Caduceus’, his fascination displayed in the sparkle of his eyes and the twitch of his eyebrow. To him, it probably seems like Caduceus can read minds. 

"That's incredible! You could fill our space for a fortune teller- just _imagine_!" Gustav grabs Caduceus' shoulder and waves his hand in an arch through the air, "Caduceus, the All Seer! You'll sell loads of tickets, I'm sure."

Caduceus sips his tea, as if considering, though he’s not even thinking about the circus. His thoughts linger on his disappointment that Gustav won’t take his advice, will probably just keep digging his grave deeper and deeper. They may be strangers, but Caduceus feels a pang of sympathy for the man who just can’t seem to find his path. 

Gustav is staring at him and Caduceus wonders if he’s said something weird, before he remembers that it’s his turn to speak. 

"Sounds good. Do you have more of this tea?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cow man appears! 
> 
> I’m working very slowly on the last few chapters, so there will probably continue to be delays. Sorry! Enjoy Caduceus, in the meantime.


	18. It Rises

**?????**

Something wakes below Wildemount, cautiously stirring to life. 

It slithers its way through the darkness, widening a tear in the surface of the world and forcing its ugly head through. It contaminates living things, corrupting and possessing them, and wears dead things like puppets. It infects great minds of the Empire and invades homes in the Dynasty. It growls and hisses, determined to satiate the _hunger_ it's built up during its centuries trapped in a prison beneath the world. 

It’s a life, sort of, split into many parts and scattered around Exandria. 

One of its numbers has been ensnared by the many twists of a great serpent’s body for decades, but now it finally makes its escape, squeezing out and floating to the surface. It is a puddle of oil on a churning ocean, thrown against a beach where it forms scales and slime to slick away the water that threatens to take it again. It becomes a thing of dreams and nightmares, striking when it is least expected. 

It clings to one subconscious and nips at the heels of another, breathing paranoia into them. A viselike grip squeezes around their minds, conjuring images of looming threats and false hints of betrayal. Its fangs scrape Caleb’s ankles and its tail twists around Fjord’s dreams.

They may run away, diving into the unknown with nothing but impulse and some thin assurance of partnership to protect them, but their monster is one of many that make up a great beast. 

Another rises from the earth, breaking free from a dungeon filled with cages. It weaves its way through deserts and swamps, bringing down hurricanes and shadows wherever it goes. It is beaten down again and again by a trio’s rage- holy, necrotic, piercing- but it no longer knows death, having learned long ago that its chance will come, with patience.

These girls, under the shade of the fallen’s wings, may stand a chance if they can keep hold of each other, but their hands are shaking as slime seeps between the gaps in reluctant fingers, itching to break free and run. 

A third horror seeps from the pages of an ancient tome, shaking off dirt and racing to catch up with a prey that wakes up running. Hints of its presence lay in broken pieces across a rebel's life, gaining power as they feed on the anger and vengeance she breeds. This part of the beast is volatile, sparking fury and inspiring cruelty in everyone it touches.

Beauregard and Mollymauk run faster than most, but it will not let them slip away. It does not know exhaustion, always keeping pace with them, following in the form of dead snakes in the road and stray scales in their clothes. 

The bonds of these new partnerships, friendships, families are tenuous at best, slowly wearing away under the stress of a deadly chase, but even if they could stick together, they surely couldn't face something they don't understand, on a scale they can't even imagine. Instead, they'll do what they've been doing all their lives: run. If they're determined enough, they might outrun this thing and skip a conflict altogether- but it won't matter in the end.

These are just three pieces in an infinite web. A few strings fraying and snapping will not matter in the grander tapestry. 

It will have its way as its victims, just seven of many in this world, run from its grasp and into a waiting hand, batting them back and forth as a cat would when playing with its food. 

It watches them now, wincing in the bright lights and loud sounds of the circus. Their marks have gathered in the shadow of a beast- one that may, at last, be the end of this futile chase. 

There is an evil this world may not survive. There is an evil Beau and Molly and Fjord and Caleb and Jester and Nott and Yasha may not survive. 

If they just keep running-

Well. Who can say, really?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay and the short chapter, but the next ones are pretty major so I'm taking my time with them. Should be done soon!


	19. We're All In This Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up- this is a _very long_ chapter. Grab some popcorn and get ready to see what took me so damn long to upload.

**ALL**

It is a rather terrible place for such a grand culmination of threads to be woven together despite the odds, despite the meddling, despite the circumstances stacked against them. Perhaps in another time it would've made sense, perhaps in another time they all would've known what they'd gotten themselves into, perhaps in another time there would've been some sort of narrative hook that brought them together more cohesively than happening upon the same circus. 

But fate doesn’t always make sense and so there they are, at the circus.

In a smaller booth, just outside the main tent, Caduceus carefully analyzes each audience member that stops for a fortune, keeping an eye out for any signs, any hints of people who are more special than they first appear. He’s not particularly skilled with this secondhand deck of cards, assembled from multiple mismatched sets and bent in several places, but he manages well enough, not especially challenged by the simple people of Trostenwald. 

All he needs to do is make an observation and connect it to whatever card he pulls, which he achieves with varying levels of success. He fails a few times in interpreting the cards for the general folk that pass through- not quite managing to decide on a meaning for the Eight of Swords card, though it was not difficult to surmise that the farmer should see a doctor for that rash- but most people coming in for a reading are easily entertained, not terribly argumentative or doubting. 

His relatively low skill level also means that he can’t do any fancy tricks or rig the results, only capable of a generic shuffle and pull. It’s this forced honesty that makes his pulling of the Tower card three times throughout the short afternoon out of the ordinary. 

The first time, it’s three ladies, all drastically different from each other. The blue tiefling, the only one of her group who’ll meet Caduceus’ eyes, is so excited for her reading that he doesn’t have the heart to tell her what the Tower typically means, can’t bring himself to spell out disaster and destruction for someone so young and cheerful. 

Instead, he tells her, “Everything will be different now. You won’t find what you’re searching for, but you’ll find what you need.” He turns to the tall one, who glares with eyes like silently brewing storm clouds, and tells her, “You’ll find a new path where you least expect it.” And he tells the goblin, who needs a better disguise, “Even when your tower falls, they’ll still be waiting for you.”

To them all, he says "You will face your greatest challenge yet very soon."

The second time, it’s two men, tripping over the poorly fitting personalities they’ve assumed. The half-orc isn’t taking this very seriously but he approaches first so Caduceus tells him, unflinching this time, “When it all blows up in your face, and it will, be ready to save what’s most important to you.” The red-head looks like he’s already seen too many towers fall and Caduceus hates to foretell another but he is an honest man so he tells him, “You can do better this time.” 

To both of them, he says, “You will face your greatest challenge yet very soon."

The third time, it’s a tiefling and a human, walking like disaster is hot on their heels. The tiefling leads the charge, eyes curious and hungry as they take in everything around him, and Caduceus tells him, “If you’re going to keep running, you’ll have to lose a few things first. Be prepared, or change your path.” The human won’t look at him, won’t even move from her spot beside the tent flap, but Caduceus turns to her anyway to say—

“Don’t. I don’t need a damn fortune.”

Caduceus nods and turns back to the tiefling, hoping he’ll carry the message for both of them: “You will face your greatest challenge yet very soon."

…

Two rowdy rebels lounge in the back row of the circus, having snuck too late to get good seats at the front. But that's fine, really; they're not as much of a disturbance back here, where they can whisper to each other at frankly inappropriate moments without drawing glares from the people seated around them. 

From the back, sat cross legged in the dirt, Beau and Molly can spy on the entire audience, discovering that the circus is possibly the best place to people watch. Although, one of them is not taking full advantage of the opportunity. 

"You've been gawking at that lady for fifteen minutes, Beau. You're missing the lovely snake dancing."

"I'm not _gawking_!"

"You're a disaster, do you know that?"

Beau’s mouth twists to retort, but is interrupted by her sudden squeak and full-body turn back to Molly, blush spreading across her face. Molly leans to the side to look behind her and laughs uproariously when he finds the woman in question staring at Beau’s back, eyebrows raised. As if to say, “You looking at _me_?”

Yasha doesn’t know exactly _why_ random people are staring at her, but she’s learned it’s nearly never a good thing. She’s already on the lookout for anyone suspicious- or _dangerous_ in this crowd of very suspicious people- since Jester certainly isn’t paying attention. They wouldn’t want a repeat of the incident that brought them together, especially now that there’s a bit more in her pocket than a single copper piece. 

She scoots a little closer to her friends, letting her body be a protective shield from prying eyes. Jester is absolutely bursting with excitement next to her, eagerly awaiting the start of the next performance. She’s anticipating miracles and beautifully impossible things, and Yasha hopes she’ll get it. 

Jester sits between Yasha and Nott, having chosen the optimal spot for holding both of their hands and making sure they’re paying attention. It’s her job, after all, to ensure these guys have _some_ fun and watch a bit of the show in between their glances behind them. 

Yasha and Nott are two of the strongest, most capable people she knows, but they still manage to be as paranoid and skittish as stray cats. Jester is confident they’ll learn to relax in time- and with enough exposure to her socializing. 

If it was up to Jester, they would've sat in the very front row, as close to action as possible, but Yasha is self-conscious about her height blocking the view of the people behind them and Nott is self-conscious about... well, Nott is self-conscious. 

Self-conscious, though not in the debilitating way she’d grown accustomed to. The cracks on her mask are completely healed and covered in a layer of fresh paint, the wrappings on her arms are secure and clean, and her cloak is comfortable, effectively helping her blend into the shadows of taller folk. She doesn’t feel as vulnerable as she normally does, protected by the life Jester has helped her build. 

"Ooh! Look someone else is coming out, look, look!"

"I see it, Jester, but look at Desmond, over there."

"Ah! Good eye, Nott!"

Nott is enjoying the show more than she thought she would, soaking up the exuberant energy Jester is putting out. She’s finding herself studying the acts carefully, looking for tricks and racing Jester to find the fool. 

The show is truly captivating, though apparently not enough of a distraction to keep Nott’s eyes from occasionally darting around the room, checking and double-checking to see if anybody is looking at them, if anybody has spotted their crew of misfits. The process is abnormally thorough, ignoring her usual escapist habits in favor of doing anything she can to protect her friend, the first person to show her true, honest kindness in all her months on the road. 

In her sweep, Nott meets eyes with a human in a badly tattered coat sitting across the main circle of the tent, in the back row opposite them. 

Caleb quickly looks away when he makes eye contact the odd halfing, kicking himself for lingering too long. There's just something so odd about them, with the bulky hood, wrappings, and _is that a mask_ -

"Caleb, relax. Just watch the show." 

Caleb struggles to unwind, tense in this unfamiliar environment. He wishes, briefly, futilely, that he could sit back and watch idly like Fjord, with only mild amusement rather than an obsessive compulsion to watch his back. 

It should be _fine_ , he tells himself. His palm warms with the assurance of a quick defense should anything go awry and his mind supplies the memory of Fjord summoning his falchion with just a moment's notice. They are not helpless, even if there were a surprise attack in the _circus_ , of all places.

They’re surrounded by people, surely nothing- or no one, in Caleb’s case- would think to go after them _here_. 

He makes an effort to copy Fjord, leaning back to mimic his casual, composed stance. He hopes it will relax him, as if merely _looking_ relaxed is the key to becoming it, but all it does is knock him off balance, making him fall backwards. 

Just before his back hits the dirt floor, Fjord grabs Caleb’s shoulder to keep him upright. He almost misses the reflex as his mind is preoccupied with imitating Caleb's posture, trying to appear ready for anything, even as he enjoys the show. Tense, but confident- like Caleb. 

Fjord smiles, that fake, easy, confident smile, and Caleb smiles back, forcing himself to enjoy this one thing, this one show, just to put Fjord at ease. 

And that, the moment Caleb relaxes, the moment Fjord is distracted by his thoughts, the moment Nott becomes suspicious, the moment Jester is fascinated with the fool, the moment Yasha notices Beau, the moment Beau notices Yasha noticing her, the moment Molly stops to laugh, is the moment all hell breaks loose. 

Well, it isn't a _moment_ , exactly, these sorts of things are never just _moments_. It happens slowly, a slight disturbance in the crowd, then a shout and a growl. It only takes seconds for the tent to be filled with people running and screaming, and _more_ growls, hungrier and angrier than the first. 

Only a few actually see the monster they’re facing, the grey husk of what was once an old man in the front row. He’s undergone a rapid decomposition, skin melting and flaking off of his face and arms. The smell of death is overwhelming, the rot like that of a corpse that has been left out for _months_ , rather than a recently dead and still walking man. He turns in circles, blindly growling and snapping at anything that moves. 

Two crownsguard- the scrawny new recruits that got stuck with this post- push through the crowd and, being the shiniest and most aggressive targets, are immediately assaulted with claws, teeth, and some dark, withering energy that creeps beneath their helmets and armor. It’s barely a fight, the combination of surprise and supernatural force leaving the guards struck down in seconds by the wailing, undead man.

The bodies are only still for a moment (the time it takes for their final breaths to leave and the life to drain from their veins) before their armor starts to rattle and the two guards rise slowly, standing on shaky legs. Under their helmets, their flesh is being eaten away by rot, rendering them completely unrecognizable. They turn in unison with the old man, who ambles forward into the crowd. 

Blood streaks across his face, painting the strips of flesh and exposed bone. His eyes bulge more than any human’s could and the skin on his arms discolors, turning a sickly green and hardening into a facsimile of scales that could be mistaken as a terrible rash. The fight doesn’t seem to have affected him; as soon as it’s over, he’s back to lunging at the next moving target. 

If anybody had been watching carefully, and somehow looked past the violence, they’d have seen the quiet retreat of something warty and slimy, suspicious only to those who’d fought and killed creatures of the same nature. Everyone that matters, everyone who may have recognized the familiar rotting scales and rubbery skin, is too far back in the crowd to see the tent flap open or watch his lumbering escape. The Devil Toad, giant and amphibious with a smell like the recent dead, could only hope to escape in calamity and horror like this. 

Kylre doesn’t look back into the tent, just plants the seeds of chaos and lets the rest take care of itself. As the coincidental gathering place for so many powerful, disorganized people, the circus serves as an excellent opportunity to take them all out with a few well-placed infected dead. More fuel to the undying fire, a hearty meal for the darkness.

In theory, the would-be adventurers will be destroyed, consumed in bite-sized chunks as they scatter and break apart. But theories, prophecies, and fate are rather fickle things. 

If Kylre had delayed a moment longer, he’d have seen seven people jump to their feet quicker than anticipated, seen the crowd part around them, seen a fierce light in their eyes that pierces through the shadows the tent casts over the grisly scene. If he had looked back, he might’ve stayed to watch his predications unravel. 

Fjord is pushing against the flow of the crowd and Caleb is following, going towards the creature rather than away, as his first instinct suggests. 

Predictably, Fjord is immediately drawn towards the source of commotion, some misguided call to action urging him forward and discarding all his careful imitations of Caleb. Caleb’s reaction is slower as he does a double take, moving backwards with the crowd before changing course to follow, supposing he should probably help Fjord deal with this. 

Beau and Molly are far ahead of them, having rushed in at the first sign of a fight, always ready to get in some good, violent fun. 

They race through the crowd, Molly dexterously leaping over panicked audience members and laughing, sound somehow cutting through the noise. Beau smiles at him, pretending to stumble over someone to give him a head start then _focusing_ and, well, she’s ahead before Molly can notice the mist gathering around her feet. 

Jester is right behind them and her crew of Nott and Yasha run alongside her, matching her contagious enthusiasm for discord. 

She almost drops her holy symbol as she pulls it out of the concealed pocket in her coat with one hand and unhooks her axe from her belt with her other hand. Running without tripping over someone and keeping track of her friends is a struggle, but Jester’s sharp eyes manage it, concentrating on spotting injuries, calls for help, and new threats.

Nott nearly disappears from sight, ducking down to avoid being trodden on by the stampede and loading her crossbow at the same time. She’s prepared to back up Jester in yet another fight, fights that are becoming more frequent and more _thrilling_ than she expected them to be. 

Yasha doesn’t have any trouble with the crowd, which immediately disperses at the sight of her greatsword, so she’s able to charge forward recklessly, surpassing Jester and Nott. As she moves, she works herself into a fury that makes her vision go red and her muscles feel limitless, _enraged_ to have an interruption in the show Jester was so excited about. 

It takes six seconds for them all to reach their starting lines, weapons ready in the form of sharp blades or swirling magic, and teeth bared in manic grins or terrified scowls. They have only a moment to assess their situation: facing down three undead creatures in a carnival tent, surrounded by fleeing townsfolk and a group of brave strangers they’ve never spoken to. 

All at once, Caleb’s firebolt blows up in the first zombie’s face, Beau’s punch knocks into its jaw, Molly’s dagger sinks into its shoulder, Jester’s giant lollipop whacks it over the head, Nott’s crossbow bolt jams in its leg, Yasha’s greatsword slashes its chest, and Fjord’s lash of dark energy wraps around its neck. 

The undead old man is absolutely vaporized, to say the least. The same cannot be said for the two infected crownsguard, the armored undead turning their empty eyes and hungry attention to the unlikely party. 

Less a party and more an unwitting group of volunteers, so wholly focused on their own objectives that strategy and communication falls to the wayside. But who can blame them, really, for being disorganized without even exchanging names?

Caleb finds himself backing up to the very edge of his range, a position where he can avoid attacks and be useful at the same time. The crowds are still thick around him, forming a bottleneck at the tent’s entrance, so he’s not surprised when he trips over someone, but he _is_ surprised when he looks down and finds himself face to face with the goblin he’d previously assumed to be a halfing. 

“Watch it!”

Her voice is exactly the croaky, shrill sort he’d expect of a goblin, but he doesn’t have time to think about the implications of a goblin in a circus tent as he aims his diamond and she aims her crossbow, intent on the husks closing in on their friends. 

In the melee several feet from them, Fjord is concentrating on his weapon, willing the darkness that emanates from the hilt to instead wrap around its gnarled blade. He raises it to strike but a flash of blue shoves him aside, knocking him off balance and forcing him to abandon the attack in favor of staying on his feet. 

As he finds his footing, he meets the eyes of the person who took his place, a tiefling about half his size who’s giggling maniacally in the face of the horrifying undead just feet from her. Jester winks and waves at the half-orc, landing a guiding bolt without even looking at the beast. 

“Too slow!”

Fjord huffs, letting his frustration inspire his next attempt. He won’t be outdone by _strangers_ , he’s spent too long with this damn sword haunting his dreams to be useless in battle. The falchion raises again, and this time he feels the power of it sing through his veins, muscles carrying it _perfectly_ through the air. 

It slices cleanly through the now empty space where the zombie would have been, had he gotten to it before Beau landed her hit. The momentum of Beau’s punch almost brings her to the ground beside the zombie she knocked out, but she’s able to regain her balance in time to offer Fjord a taunting grin. Half the battle won, she turns, at the same time as Fjord and Jester, to the other undead crownsguard, moving in tandem as they seek out the next round of close quarters combat. 

It’s too late for them to be of any help, Molly is already flinging his stolen dagger straight in the zombie’s decomposing eye socket. Another knife, mismatched and almost too dull, falls out of his sleeve and he lets it slide across his palm as it goes, drawing blood and jagged shards of ice. 

He cuts into the crownsguard, its rotting flesh freezing in sharp fractals around Molly’s blade. The slash seems miniature beside the slash of Yasha’s greatsword, which nearly severs the head of the crownsguard when it cleaves through its shoulder, but every bit of damage counts. The force of Yasha’s attack pushes the crownsguard backward, allowing Molly to easily yank his dagger out, ready for the next round. 

“Your left!”

He ducks, but not before the crownsguard, recovering from their attacks much faster than predicted, grasps his horn, tugging him close enough to sink a sword into his shoulder. Yasha _roars_ beside him, pulling the undead man away and practically ripping him apart with her bare hands. 

Molly reacts just in time to match her shout with a shriek of his own in a hissing, foreign language that makes the crownsguard’s exposed blood and flesh boil. Its very blood seems to turn against it, burning through what’s left of its life until it finally falls, leaving Molly and Yasha out of breath and panting over their kill. 

The end of a battle is supposed to be quiet, a well-earned breather after exhausting victory, but even after the undead slump into rest, the circus tent is buzzing with enough noise to make their ears ring. 

The remaining crowd is screaming as they push out of the narrow tent exit, panicked and unaware that the threat has been dealt with. The heroes, if they can be called that, are groaning with their new wounds and the energy they’ve expended, energy they didn’t anticipate they’d need to watch a circus performance. Energy they _definitely_ didn’t think would be used in banding together with strangers to do a good deed. 

Fjord, Jester, and Beau are standing around the first crownsguard’s remains as they take a moment to scrutinize each other, bloody weapons in hand and questions in mind. 

It’s not every day that you find yourself doing something completely impulsive, and (in some cases) uncharacteristically heroic, only to be joined by several strangers, who seem equally surprised to be doing the same thing. It’s also not every day that you fight zombies- though, it’s certainly not the _first_ time for any of them. 

Fjord wonders if they’ll ever be safe. If even the _circus_ is infiltrated by… whatever they’ve been fighting, then they surely don’t have much hope of escape. What are these monsters after- him, Caleb, these people? Fjord’s eyes narrow as they pass over his temporary compatriots, the too cheerful tiefling and the too grumpy monk. He doesn’t believe it, even as he thinks it, but he tells himself, _“They could have something to do with it”_.

Beau wonders if this has anything to do with Tracy. This whole undead business could be haunting them, a domino effect sparked by one bad deal. What could these people- the pretty tiefling and clumsy half-orc- have to do with it, why would they help? Beau has learned the hard way that nobody does anything for free- especially if fucking _zombies_ are involved. 

Jester wonders if there is more to the Trostenwald undead than meets the eye. If they can infect people, can they even be contained? Will she be able to keep her friends safe— keep everyone, even these new people, safe? Maybe these guys could help, even if the girl seems mean and the half-orc seems sort of weak. 

Off to their left, by the corpse of the second crownsguard, Yasha stands silently, trying to wipe zombie flesh off her greatsword and figure out what she should do about the bleeding tiefling beside her. Blood is quickly spreading from his shoulder wound, darkening the bright orange color scheme of his coat. 

Everything about the tiefling screams weird and suspicious but he looks up at her with a pained grimace and Yasha immediately turns to find Jester, someone she knows can and will help. It’s almost like she’s looking in a twisted mirror, seeing another damaged, scary person in need of help. Maybe she can be the Jester in this situation, do anything she can to help, even if she’ll probably never see him again.

Behind all the others, Caleb and Nott are having a staring contest, both unsure how much of a threat the other is. Goblins are always bad news and humans are always a little prejudiced- a recipe for disaster, especially when both armed with deadly weapons. They’re thinking the same thing, more or less- will this person be a threat to me or my friends? 

Caleb is still catching his breath, tearing his eyes away from the goblin, and planning his next move when his ears catch a sound just to his left and down. 

With a squelch and a shuffle, the zombies are slowly reforming, bones fusing clumsily and flesh blending into blobs that vaguely resemble humans. The armor of the crownsguards clang as their bodies attempt to reanimate, bones cracking against breaks and flesh sewing its wounds shut. The old man who started it all rests near Caleb; once a forgotten skid mark on the tent floor, now a puddle with a horribly deformed face rising from the remains and turning to howl at the nearest enemy. 

Caleb stumbles backward, hoping to leave the battlefield before they manage to get back up and land a lucky hit on him as they did the purple tiefling. 

Caleb, and the others who have become wise to the situation, don’t make it very far before the zombies rise onto unsteady legs, growls coming out even more mangled from partially severed heads and other lacerations. A fireball sparks to life in Caleb’s palm, his eyes darting around to quickly do the math on area when—

A bright light fills the tent, blinding everyone, alive or dead. Only Jester, accustomed to divine light, is able to peek out from behind her hands, catching a glimpse of the undead guards dissolving with a low sizzling noise. Their flesh, or what’s left of it, bubbles for a moment and then bursts, leaving the zombies to fall into small piles of ash.

The light cuts out, leaving the new adventurers in the dim light of an abandoned circus tent once more. 

Yasha has to blink a few times to readjust her eyes from light to dark again but when she can see, her eyes latch onto a new source of light: a crystal sitting atop the staff of a _new_ stranger. He approaches Yasha with a kind smile but she doesn’t notice his expression or his vibrant pink hair or his bright green armor in favor of considering how _tall_ he is, towering over even her. 

Caduceus only affords one glare towards the dead he destroyed, disappointed but not surprised to see his premonitions coming true. He’ll have to deal with Kylre, one dangerous piece in this puzzle, at some point but for now- well, they’ve got a bleeding tiefling. He holds his hands out to the stranger, offering without intruding.

“Are you alright?”

Molly doesn’t look up, bent over and bleeding from the wound in his shoulder. Yasha is standing awkwardly next to him, unsure how to deal with all the new people around her. Beau makes her way over, giving Yasha a look that seems to mean many things at once, and puts her hand on Molly’s back, asking him questions under her breath, too low for Yasha, or even Caduceus, to hear. 

After a few steadying breaths, Molly glances up at Caduceus, pupil-less red eyes hiding secrets Caduceus isn’t sure he wants to know, and gives a shaky thumbs up. The gesture is casual, but the eye contact is not, a learned lack of trust in his bottomless gaze that meets an instinctual suspicion in Caduceus’ milder stare. 

“I'm fine. Just a minor flesh wound.”

“Here,” Caduceus looks to Beau for permission then puts his hand on Molly’s shoulder at her confused nod, “I’ll fix that for you.”

With a word and a rush of warm energy, the stab knits itself together, leaving smooth lavender skin in its place. At this, Jester, who’d been watching the tall man with ravenous curiosity up until then, pouts and runs over to Yasha. 

“I can do that too! Look,” she touches the nearest cut, too shallow to really warrant her attention, and, with a flash of green light, it heals, “all better!”

Caduceus, apparently ignorant of Jester’s defensive jealousy, nods with mild amusement. “Very impressive.” 

Caduceus’ smile is definitely different from Jester’s, not nearly as manic, but it’s just as effective at putting the whole assembled group at ease. It makes it difficult to suspect him, as much as everyone in the room wants to- placing the blame on _anybody_ at this point would be easier than the rampant, unsupported suspicion. 

Without anything actively attacking them or anybody on death’s door, they’re left wondering what they’re supposed to be doing now and picking apart the odd familiarity of their company. The feeling is… unsure and confident at once, the understanding that _something_ has drawn them together and the complete uncertainty of _what_ it could’ve been- simple circumstance, or something larger than them? 

Destiny or not, it’s easier to accept the company than it is to question it. 

Fjord, in a rare moment of insight, realizes that they’re in an empty tent, perfect for an easy, clean escape. He turns to Caleb, nudging him out his stunned stupor. “Should we get out of here?” 

To his surprise, Caleb frowns at the suggestion, scanning the people assembled around them, particularly the odd goblin he fought next to, and the corpses lying on the ground.

“This is not dissimilar to the creatures we’ve been fighting, ja? Should we…investigate?”

Jester physically buts into the conversation, pushing herself into the space between Caleb and Fjord. “You’ve been running into dead things too?” As she speaks, she’s visibly sizing them up, trying to figure out where a frumpy wizard and wimpy half-orc could possibly fit into the undead threat.

“Snake things, right? Lots of scales and shit?” Beau stands with her arms crossed next to Molly, seemingly loathe to share _any_ information, however vague. 

Caduceus stands at the border of the group to watch the realizations and questions unravel, understanding how their destinies will intertwine. He sees why the Wildmother wanted him here, to witness this delightful show of unlikely fate. 

The plan is a little clearer now that he’s met these people. This might be his ticket out, onto his next stop. These may be the cavalry, the power he needs on his mission. It’s a sign that they’ve all met here. 

“Should we do something about it?” Nott speaks from behind Jester’s skirt, hiding from the group as much as she can, “We could work together to find out what all this is, maybe solve the problem?”

There’s an immediate snap of tension in the air at the question, the _invitation_ to pursue some great mystery with people they’ve barely met. It’s a commitment, a responsibility- it’s _terrifying_ for people who are unused to making and keeping promises. 

Nonetheless, it is a wonder that they’ve managed to stumble upon others facing the same inexplicable things they’ve been struggling with. They may not _understand_ it, but they all feel the threat of this _thing_ that seems to hang over their heads. Breathing, creeping, following them. 

They may not know specifically what these undead stalkers mean for them, but their dreams do not inspire any hope that it will turn out well. It’s getting worse, _closer_. They’re running out of time. 

They could face it head on. With these people.

“Nah,” Molly seems to have fully recovered from his brush with death, standing up straight as if nothing had happened at all, and turns to Beau to share a wicked grin, “I think we should just go get a drink.”

Or they could keep running. 

The tension fades and everyone takes a breath, easy now that the commitment seems so little. Just acquaintances in a tavern after a fight with some undead people in a circus tent. What could go wrong?

“I need a drink, anyway. Jessie?” 

Jester nods slowly but doesn’t look down at Nott, eyes still lingering on their new companions. Yasha falls in behind them, unsure but willing to follow as she puts her faith in Jester and Nott’s judgement. 

Caleb and Fjord are silent as they join the party. They’re scheming quietly, trying to decide whether strength in numbers is really worth the risk, or, at least, Caleb is and Fjord is pretending to. 

Caduceus trails behind them as they leave the tent, watching in fascination. Absolute _disasters_ , all of them.

He can see it now, can see, in the _absurdity_ of their decision-making, the path that has lead them all to this circus. He barely holds himself back from shaking his head at the realization that these people (these beautiful, weird, idiotic people) have, in an attempt to avoid their problems, run straight into a bigger problem. He's not sure whether this is a testament to the strength of fate, or the incomprehensible chaos of individuality.

In trying to keep pace with the party, Caduceus takes a pause in his long strides, allowing himself time to close his eyes and reflect. Under the shade of his eyelids, he sees snatches of half-forgotten dreams and visions, images that only make sense now that he’s seen a glimpse of the bigger picture. 

He sees them treading over cracks between worlds, stifling undead under their feet without truly knowing it and facing off against a larger threat while trying to move around it. The longer they run, the more enemies they tear through and the farther they fall into a life they wouldn’t have consciously chosen.

He sees them in another place, far from here, battling everything they thought they could outrun. He sees them _winning_. 

Even drunk and stumbling the Mighty Nein manage to fulfill their fate. 

He opens his eyes, looks at the faces, hears the brief bits of conversation, and feels the bizarre _energy_ of the party. Caduceus doesn’t know everything, knows very little, in fact. And the rest of his new friends know even less of the evils they’re meant to face, but they don’t need to know, not when they’ll always end up following the same impulses that brought them together as unwitting heroes- and unwitting _friends_. 

There will always be darkness. It will always escape. And there will always be swords and magic that raise against it, heads that can’t help but turn towards danger. Even if they try to keep away from it. 

If the Mighty Nein keep running-

Well. Who can say, really?

Perhaps the evil of the world will not survive them. 

None of these puzzle pieces, these wildly different people, should fit together at all, especially not in a shared adventure and far-reaching, noble quest, but they all agree on a nearby tavern. Maybe, one day, they’ll look a bit more like they belong, like they were meant to be like this, together. 

For now, they’ll drink like they’ve known each other for years, sitting in an order that somehow feels awkward, as if they are sat next to the wrong person. But the faces beside them are familiar- surely, any other arrangement of companions would’ve been ridiculous. Dysfunctional, coincidental. 

Destined. 

Circled around a crowded tavern table, they are _friends_ , not decided by proximity or upbringing or preference, but by _fate_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all know me by now, I bend the rules with D&D spells if I think it'll sound cool. Some of the spells or attacks probably wouldn't work as described or be available at their level but I couldn't be bothered to research something so trivial. 
> 
> As you can probably tell by the conclusion, this is the last ""real chapter"", since the next one will be a sort of epilogue. 
> 
> The ending is pretty open-ended, which I suspect many people won't like, but I wanted to focus mainly on their interactions before becoming one party, rather than them altogether. If I had the time, energy, and talent, I would rewrite the whole campaign with the all the little changes their new relationships would create but alas I am just one inexperienced author. The epilogue does explore those little interactions though, so you'll get a bit of that (whenever I finish it ahh)! 
> 
> Remember in chapter one when I said this would be 25,000 words? I apparently lied to myself, because somewhere in the editing process I doubled that. 
> 
> This is by far the longest thing I've ever written in my life- my previous record was probably 10,000 words? So this has been a massive step for me, and I really appreciate all the support I got through it! It hasn't been perfect and there are certainly a few things I would've changed (and _many_ things I would've planned better) if I could do it over... but I'm still proud of what I've managed to accomplish with this fic! 
> 
> I'd like to thank everyone who's been commenting on every chapter and everyone else who left comments and kudos! Everything helps keep me motivated, and it's so nice to see people like what I write!
> 
> I also have a tumblr by the same username, if you want to check it out. I post shorter fics there first, then put a better, edited version on ao3. Feel free to ask, message, whatever.
> 
> Stay tuned for the final chapter of Friends of Fate coming... hopefully before I go back to school.


	20. On The Road Again (Epilogue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I know it's been like a month but I don't have a good excuse so... enjoy the last chapter and thank you for being so patient and sticking around!!!

Caleb should have learned to hesitate when invited to a seemingly meaningless team-up with strangers. He should have learned none of these things ever turn out to be short term. Didn't his time with Fjord teach him anything? 

He sighs into his drink. He _did_ learn something from Fjord and that's what's landed him here, drinking with people he still barely knows after nearly a month travelling together. A month they’ve spent on the run from one thing after another- people, pasts, monsters- doing weird jobs for weird people and, of course, drinking. 

They should, by all accounts, have broken up this merry band weeks ago, when it became clear that they’re all puzzle pieces from different sets, marred by bent edges and clashing colors. But nothing is that simple with this group, whose inception took place in a circus by what appeared to be random chance. 

Caleb has never stopped thinking about what could have driven them to meet. It's one of the many things he’s sure he'll ever stop thinking about. 

The logical conclusion, the sort of conclusion Caleb likes best, is that a common thread pulled them together, but the only thing they really had in common was the _creatures_. Eight people, all plagued by the same undead monsters.  _Surely_ , that's what did it. 

But  _why_ them? Why these eight? 

Who was responsible?

Could it have been Mollymauk, the liar, who even Caduceus thinks is suspicious? Hiding something in that enigmatic past of his? Could it have been Beauregard, with her frightening, untrained potential and her criminal connections? An attitude that pissed off the wrong entity?

Could it have been Nott, the goblin, enough said? Some monstrous past of hers coming to light? Could it have been Yasha, mysterious, powerful, and brooding? Some dark shadow of hers looming over all of them? Could it have been Jester, deceptively cheerful, impossibly nice? Some consequence of worshipping a make believe god?

Could it have been Fjord, and the great serpent that haunts his dreams? Is there any way that Fjord's curse, his  _deal_ , could have manifested in these creatures?

Could it have been Caduceus, who seems so trustworthy, but can't be? Eyes filled with death and _something_ they can’t even begin to comprehend?

Or, maybe, it wasn't any of them. Perhaps they had all been suffering from the same encounters due to pure coincidence, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The odds aren’t astronomical, they could’ve, _technically_ , just meant by chance. 

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter what happened to that circus, or that town, or whoever was responsible. He could chalk it up to another mysterious function of fate.

Fjord nudges him, gesturing to the shots Molly is paying for. 

As usual, Fjord doesn't seem concerned. He is amongst perfectly pleasant people; all that should matter is this tavern, this company, this moment. 

Caleb catches the shot that’s slid towards him. He downs it without another thought. 

The alcohol burns going down throat. He imagines it is fire, catching on the gasoline in his veins. He imagines it burning down all those thoughts and plans and calculations. 

He takes another and curses himself for Fjord's reckless, contagious habits. He'll worry about it in the morning. 

...

Molly is having an incredible time, though that should go without saying. He'd be having a good time even if he and Beau hadn't gone to that circus. Even if it was him and Beau with a totally different group of strangers in the pub. Even if he and Beau had ended up on the streets, huddled for warmth and laughing at their own misfortune. 

He'll be alright wherever she wants to go, but he  _does_  like these people, to an extent. As much as one can like a group of odd people in this world full of cruel strangers looking to cheat fools out of their money, or lives. 

Granted, Molly and Beau are typically on the _cheating_ side of that equation rather than the _cheated_ , but they’re not looking to get a taste of their own medicine any time soon. Molly has learned that it pays to be skeptical- especially when it comes to people with dark magic, tragic pasts, and made-up gods- but that won’t stop him from having some fun in this hilarious clusterfuck of a party. 

The trio of ladies is a variety pack of delight, each of them providing Molly with some new, unknown part of the world to experience vicariously. The tiefling represents a unique opportunity to learn more about himself; he'd like to ask her a few questions, since he's never had a chance to speak with someone with the same hellfire in their blood. The goblin is a _fascinating_ bundle of peculiarities, not that he trusts her; he’s met too many little thieves of her kind. The tall, goth lady is a mystery he’s not sure he wants to solve; her demeanor always vaguely threatening and too quiet for his tastes. 

Molly recognizes a darkness similar to his own in Yasha (a power she doesn’t understand, a life she never lived), like a warped mirror, and he doesn’t particularly want to risk getting much closer to that- though, he _is_ curious. He’s curious about all his new companions, his desire to unravel their stories slowly winning over the urge to leave them be and not prod too much. 

He’s finding himself examining his companions even more closely than he normally would, an aftereffect of either his time discerning dangerous criminals from useful ones or his exposure to Beau’s constant, infectious desire to know _more_. 

In all that observation, he’s decided that the half-orc and the wizard are his favorites- and not just because they're fun to tease. Not just because they’re handsome, either. 

Well, it's at least sixty percent those reasons. But only sixty. 

It's also for the entertainment value- they're both a strange mix of charismatic, intelligent, and impulsive, making them a wonderfully complicated concoction of calculating and stupid. Every decision they make is laced with some sort of absurdity, contradictory natures warring in the simplest situations. 

Their arcane talents are equally intriguing; Molly he wonders if he'll learn anything by watching, if those precise blasts of fire or spontaneous bolts of darkness will illuminate any of his own abilities. Probably not, but a person so intimately acquainted with the arcane could still be a useful resource, a way for Molly to become familiar with another part of this world he hopes to explore, another element of his life he’s determined to master. 

Although, none of that will even be a _possibility_ if Fjord and Caleb keep brooding at the edges of the party, refusing to fully commit to the company they’re stuck with. 

Molly turns to Beau to ask her opinion on how to proceed, and finds her staring dreamily at the quiet one. Memorizing Yasha’s features is her new favorite pastime, a hobby she’s become quite skilled at with weeks of practice. 

He sighs loudly and, when that doesn’t get her attention, elbows her to break her trance. As she looks back at him, bewildered and slightly apologetic, Molly waves the bartender over, ordering another round of shots. 

"I'm going to go flirt. Watch how it's done." 

...

Fjord  _wants_  to be on guard, he really does. It's just... it's been  _weeks_ , surely it's time to relax and let this little party happen? But Caleb doesn't seem to trust anybody, still cautious with every decision, even one as simple as sitting down for a drink. 

Fjord wants to be strategic, wants to make sure that this group doesn't interfere with his or Caleb's goals, but he’s starting to think that it may be best for them to be distracted. Maybe getting drunk and ogling the tieflings will be healthier for them than whatever arcane nonsense they're going to pursue in the morning. 

Maybe it's fated that he'll always be diving head first into impulse, no matter how closely he watches Caleb. 

Visions of raging waters, yellow eyes, and grasping tentacles flash in front of his eyes, and against his eyelids when he squeezes them shut. He’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to run from his past, how much longer he’ll be able to _pretend_. Caleb knows almost everything, but not how much Fjord is still pretending, still masquerading as someone else, someone with true, reliable power. How much Fjord is still trying to be like _Caleb_. 

Fjord isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to distract himself from the problems digging their claws into his back and filling his throat with water as he sleeps. There’s only so many blows he can take before he has to admit to himself that he’s not powerful enough to run with this crowd, and not smart enough to keep up with Caleb. 

Still, he keeps looking for the next thing that’ll push his thoughts away, the next thing that’ll bury his nightmares in the depths of his subconscious, where they belong. 

A shot glass slides towards Fjord. He grabs it on instinct and looks up to see Molly propped up against the bar and grinning at him. 

“How’s your night been, Fjord?”

“Uh,” Fjord clears his throat, willing his face to cool and his voice to steady- he won’t break now, not even under the pressure of Molly’s invasion of his personal space, leaning in to leave only inches between them, “Good?”

Molly laughs and mutters something under his breath, though it’s not in any language Fjord knows, much harsher than Common but higher pitched than Orcish. He’s only ever heard it on the battlefield when Molly curses enemies and Fjord thinks for one panicked moment that Molly is turning on him, putting a curse on his blood, and that he should’ve listened to Caleb, should’ve never even thought of trusting these people-

Then there’s a laugh, behind him, farther down the bar. It’s Jester, the other pretty tiefling, face split in a mischievous smile and shoulders shaking with laughter. Her giggles lighten the atmosphere immediately, eliminating any imagined hostility in the space of a breath. 

Fjord frowns but his shoulders relax a little. Maybe he should trust his instincts, after all. 

He takes the shot. 

...

Jester is  _delighted_ , to say the absolute least. She's gone from two friends (or three, if you count the Traveler) to  _seven_ , which is simply unprecedented for her. 

She worried having and looking after so many friends would be overwhelming, but everybody is so nice, especially her new tiefling bestie. Molly is lovely and just as excited about everything as Jester is, always down to visit pastry shops with her when everyone else is fretting about money or strategy. 

Being able to speak Infernal with someone is another perk, like sharing a secret language between the two of them. It allows them to gossip openly and tell stupid jokes, and it gives Jester a little insight on the things Molly says when nobody else can hear. 

Her ears twitch now, picking up his voice a few stools away. 

“ _You’re just adorable, aren’t you, handsome?_ ”

Fjord flusters at Molly’s words, unsure what to make of the hissing, sharp Infernal. Jester can see the gears spinning in his head, something approaching panic lighting his eyes. As fun as it is to mess with Fjord, and _finally_ get him to loosen up a bit, she doesn’t want this to escalate, so she scoots over to break the tension, giggling behind them.

“Don’t worry, Fjord. He’s saying nice things,” Jester winks, then turns to Molly, using her hand block her mouth from Fjord even when her switch to Infernal makes it unnecessary, “ _You’re doing great!_ ”

Molly grins at her as Fjord flushes a deeper shade of green, diverting his eyes from the two tieflings crowding him and looking down to his drink instead. Jester gives him a break and moves down the bar, letting Caleb take her spot when Fjord gestures him over. 

She’s off to make her rounds with the rest of the party, but she keeps her eyes trained on Caleb for a few moments, watching him drink silently as Fjord and Molly talk. Caleb is turning out to be one of the most difficult cases of the whole group, more resistant to Jester’s philosophies of fun and friendship than even Nott and Yasha were. He’s excessively cautious and closed off, only ever allowing Fjord to coax him out of his shell. 

Jester isn’t one to waste her time judging and suspecting people, but even she can admit the two of them seem pretty fishy, always whispering to each other and plotting apart from the group. She’s afraid they’ll take off in the middle of the night without telling anyone. 

The worry eats at her but she ignores it in favor of blind confidence, a potentially irrational certainty that she’ll make it work. These people are her new friends- new _family_ , even if they won’t admit it- and she’ll do anything for them, just as she’d do for Nott and Yasha. 

This is what she left home to find, people and adventure and something _more_. She loves her momma, and all the time they spend together, but leaning against one of her friends after a tough battle or a botched heist or chaotic bar crawl is something new and different and good. She’s finding something in this group she never got in her room at home, feeling what it’s like to trust someone, to lend pieces of herself out to other people and see that they can heal just as well as she can. 

She’s hoping she’ll continue to connect with others, and let them connect with her. It’s why she’s so determined to win over people like Caleb, who seem just as unwilling to ask for help as she was. 

But she knows not everything can be solved in a night, so for now she directs her attention away from the wizard, who’s hunched over his drink and _trying_ , though failing, to look personable (it’s an adorable and painful attempt), and turns to look over the rest of the group. 

Beau is sitting near the end of the bar, alone now that Molly is causing mischief elsewhere. She sips her whiskey slowly, contemplating something and building up some liquid courage. Jester follows her line of sight and smiles to herself when she sees Yasha at the end of Beau’s stare. 

Beau isn't as bad as she pretends to be, at least when Molly is making her laugh and relax a little. She’s got a nice smile, on the rare occasions she decides to show it, and she  _certainly_  seems to like Yasha, if those heart-eyes are anything to judge by. 

For her effort, Jester decides to throw the monk a bone. She plops down next to Yasha and pokes her, wiggling her eyebrows and tilting her head towards Beau.

“You’ve got a not-so-secret admirer, Yasha.” 

...

Beau can’t believe that Molly has abandoned her to go flirt with the half-orc, but she supposes she’s happy he’s making new friends. Seeing him talking and acting normal around people is a pleasant confirmation that her influence didn’t manage to fuck him up too badly. 

Regardless of how nice it is to see, Molly’s extroversion still leaves Beau to mull over her thoughts by herself, nursing a nearly empty glass of whiskey. By force of habit, she’s doing a sweep of the room, keeping an eye on her new companions. It’s an interesting group, weirder even than the people she used to hang out with.

Fjord and Caleb in particular catch her eye; though, Beau is not the only one with her misgivings about the pair- everyone is some measure of suspicious about the two loners who _must_ be hiding something sinister. Beau isn’t sure how true her impression of them is, but she’s not necessarily _worried_ about it either way. She’s sure she could take either of them in a fight, it would just be a matter of surviving a few arcane blasts to get in a handful of hits. 

As she’s watching, her attention focused on the wizard and warlock, the hairs on the back of her neck stand up a bit, sensing eyes on her. She shifts slightly, just enough to put the spy in her peripheral. This isn’t the first time she’s had someone scope her out in a bar, but it is one of the few times she’s noticed before it was too late.

Nott’s big yellow eyes are drilling holes in the back of her head. _How long has she been doing that?_

As soon as Beau moves, Nott’s eyes are darting away and down, feigning innocence. Beau’s now one-sided staring contest is short lived, lasting until the sound of shot glasses clinking against the bar draws her gaze away. She’s only distracted for a _second_ but it’s enough; when Beau looks back, Nott is already gone. 

It almost makes Beau laugh, amused to see Nott’s talents being used in such a trivial, probably petty way, exactly how Beau would use them. Beau can admire a good thief and Nott is one of the best when her instincts aren’t dulled with alcohol. She’s among the few people in the party Beau considers a real threat, especially to her wallet. Watching the little goblin do her work is a useful reminder to hold her purse more securely. 

She does another scan of the bar floor, under tables and between legs in the spaces a tiny goblin could squeeze into, but she has to accept it’s hopeless, Nott has vanished. Beau turns her attention away, skimming over Molly, Fjord, and Caleb. 

Her eyes skip to Yasha and Jester and stop there, frozen. Another pair she admires for their strength, kindness and, if she’s honest with herself, beauty. They’re so close to her, just a few feet down the bar. 

Gods, she should just go over there, shouldn’t she?

Beau finds herself wondering, against all better advice, what Molly would do in this situation. Of course, the answer is that the amnesiac, flamboyant, _impulsive_ tiefling would just saunter up with some shitty pick-up line he overheard from gods know where— but is she really going to follow the advice of someone who can barely read, barely knows anything beyond what she’s taught him?

Then again, he’s the one hitting it off with Fjord and the rest of the party while she’s alone with a whiskey to take her mind off her lack of charisma. Without looking away from Yasha, she lifts her glass for another swig and finds herself drinking air, the glass having been drained sometime in the last few minutes of misery. 

Just _alone_ then.

Left with no good reason to keep sitting alone, Beau stands up hastily, before she can second-guess her decision. As subtly as she can, she clears her throat and shrugs her shoulders, as if preparing for a fight, then, as an important afterthought, remembers to look down at her coat, quickly brushing off errant crumbs and dust. She rubs her hands together, trying to psyche herself up. 

_I can do this. I punch monsters for a living, flirting is nothing._

Jester and Yasha are laughing as Beau approaches, straightening her coat and trying to look as confident as she normally is. Beau’s face breaks into the best smile she can manage, hopefully suave, hopefully cool, hopefully not creepy, and she says,

“Hey ladies, uh, what’s up?”

...

Yasha likes Beau. She’s brave and bold and she refuses to walk on eggshells around Yasha, as unafraid of her as Jester is. Not intimidated by her height or her strength or the shadows that seem to cling to her eyes. 

It’s nice to pretend to be normal, pretend to be just another person in this bar that Beau may find attractive. Not damaged or weighed down by baggage or hunted by storm clouds. Just a woman with friends and a drink. 

She takes Jester’s advice and surrenders herself to the laughter and smiles bubbling up in her chest, letting her painful memories and her absent memories fade away. Beau’s awkward smile and Jester’s mischievous giggles push away the negativity that hangs over her head like a stormcloud, clearing her skies for a night. 

Yasha thinks she could really _live_ like this, by forging something _new_.

Her scars start to represent strength and she weaves them into her history, making them a part of her foundation instead of an obstacle in her path. Her empty memories are less foreboding as she begins to look at them as an opportunity for her to create something _better_. Her grief makes its home in her heart, but she unlocks the door to its cage, letting in new allies, friends, and loves, though never replacements. 

Beside her, Jester is looking distractedly around the bar, trying to find Nott or spying on Caleb or grinning at Molly, and Yasha is struck by the desire to be like her, always looking out for family. She wants to be _here_ for these people, wants to see them all thrive like Jester and Nott. She doesn’t want to miss a second of it, wants to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of what they’ll grow into.

She needs to stick around to see Fjord and Caleb overcome those unmistakable shadows of regret and become themselves again. She needs to see Molly’s story to its end, find a resolution to the emptiness in his eyes that’s almost a reflection of her own. She needs to talk to Beau more, understand what’s underneath the hard layer she shows to the world. 

There’s a silent promise to herself in that, latching onto her mind with branches of lightning through her nerves, empowering rather than hurting. She’ll see this through, become a proper friend to them, as they will be for her. 

She’ll find her power, her strength, here, in the murmur and laughter of conversation, rather than a sword or burning rage.

A tension in her shoulders eases, like a weight lifted. Later that night, she’ll find a handful of white feathers in her bed. 

For now, she just turns to Beau and gives her best smile. They match, their grins equally rigid, out of practice, and _genuine_. 

“You’re very funny, Beauregard.” 

... 

Nott doesn’t trust any of these idiots, but her month of being stuck with this party has at least taught her how to deal with them. 

It’s not a problem for Jester, who, of course, started loving them all instantly. Yasha is adjusting without trouble as well, taking a liking to Beau especially. Nott is apparently alone in her suspicions of the group, but it’s not the first time she’s had to be the cautious one of their trio.

Even now, Nott’s need to observe and protect temporarily overrides her need to get more alcohol in her system, allowing her to put down her drink to concentrate on squinting suspiciously at Beau. She’s staring at Yasha _again_ , unmoving with a glass of whiskey in her hands and a blank look on her face. Nott has half a mind to go over there and ask her what she wants, but as soon as Beau shifts in her direction she loses her nerve and makes a break for it. 

Nott is hiding before she can think about the consequences of leaving her liquor behind, immediate regret giving her a headache. It’s been too long since she’s had a proper drink, too busy running for her life and earning coin. At least she’s not alone in that particular struggle; Caleb is also drinking as if it’s his first glass of water after months in a desert. 

Caleb is easily the one Nott trusts the least, with the shadows under his eyes and his general twitchiness whenever anybody but Fjord talks to him. He seems lost at the moment, trying to look occupied with an empty glass of whiskey while Fjord talks to Molly. 

At least Fjord and Molly _talk_ , as weird as they are with all the shady magic and obviously made-up backgrounds. Nott can’t understand them, but they’re not as inscrutable as the wizard who freezes at the sight of his own fire. 

Nobody is keen on trying to talk to him, preferring to just leave him to his lonely musings, but Nott suspects he may be thinking of jumping ship and she’d rather not have a falling out so early; wouldn’t leave much hope for the future if she lets the party fall to pieces in the first month. 

_I’m getting too used to having this many friends._

Leaving her hiding place in the shadow of a table, she sneaks down a few seats to Caleb’s unoccupied side, ignoring his jump as she enters his peripheral. 

“Ah, I, uh, didn’t see you there.” 

Nott climbs onto the seat beside him and watches as Caleb shifts uncomfortably on his barstool. She can practically _see_ his thoughts turning as he overthinks this interaction, trying to figure out what Nott could possibly be singling him out for. She’s sure the possibility of a friendly chat hasn’t even crossed his mind. 

“I know.” Nott is, oddly enough, comfortable here, with the alcohol warming her and the mask covering her face. “I just wanted to say hi.” 

“Oh,” Caleb makes a show of relaxing, forcing his shoulders to _appear_ less tense, “Hallo.”

Nott is no stranger to insecurity, to hiding who she is to protect herself. She sees the same sentiment reflected in Caleb, who clearly hopes that if he can keep his secrets, they may disappear for good and make him into someone different. It won’t work, she knows from experience, and Caleb would be better off if he faced himself, or at least made himself a more comfortable mask.

There’s an unspoken agreement in this group that they’re all willing to work together to help each other, all in the hopes that the favor will be returned when they’re in need. Nott wants their help, eventually, so she’s focused on wanting to help now, and ensuring everyone else gets what they need. 

Maybe it’s a foolish echo of a family she’s avoiding, a family that she may never be able to truly have again. Maybe it’s more selfish than she thinks, more driven by the thought of keeping powerful people on her side. Maybe it’s Jester rubbing off on her. 

Maybe it’s love, support, loyalty. Maybe it’s stupid. 

She looks between Caleb, fidgeting with the bandages covering his arms, so similar to the ones Nott discarded weeks ago, and the bartender, polishing glasses. 

“Do you want me to order another round of drinks?

...

Caduceus loves to see things work out exactly how they’re supposed to. He always has faith that they will, but that doesn’t mean they’ll manifest in the way he thinks they should. 

The Mighty Nein have managed to exceed his wildest dreams. They may not look like much, but he knows what they can do, what they _will_ do. 

He sees them getting closer to revealing something scarier than they can handle and facing it anyway. Everyday there’s another, bigger monster and everyday there’s another, greater, slightly questionable victory. He’s surrounded by heroes who don’t know that they’re heroes. 

He sees them fulfilling the fate they’ve been tasked with but more importantly, he sees them _growing_. 

He sees Molly and Beau leaning on others, being vulnerable in spite of their fears. They’re still guarded, only letting the world see inside them in measured amounts, but Caduceus thinks it’s a good step, a careful, rational step.

He sees Fjord and Caleb truly changing, rather than just pretending, for the first time in a long time. They’ve still got their collection of idiosyncrasies, but they’re striving for something better than the lives they’d doomed themselves to. 

He sees Nott and Yasha surrounding themselves with nice things, even if they don’t think they deserve them. They’re still holding onto their shadows, but their darkness is becoming a chapter in a longer novel, one filled with purpose and family. 

He sees Jester easing away from her unshakeable cheer, letting her rougher patches show through. She’s still a powerful, inspirational force, bringing happiness and comfort to everyone she speaks with, but now she invites the same comfort for herself, asking for help when she needs it. 

Jester is a healer in every sense of the word, downright _ferocious_ when it comes to helping her friends. Friendship comes easy to her, her strong empathy urging her to adopt new relationships no matter how hopeless or resistant they seem. She’s talking to Fjord and Molly, then Beau and Yasha, whirling around the room to her administer her company as an antidote for the social paralysis infecting the group. 

She’s walking over to Caduceus now, sitting down at his table off the end of the bar. She squints at him, challenging and appraising. Caduceus doesn’t react, maintaining his pleasant neutrality. 

“What are you doing back here, all by yourself?”

“Oh,” Caduceus pulls himself from his thoughts, smiling softly at Jester, “Just watching. Drinking tea.”

“Where did you get _tea_?”

Jester looks more excited than astonished, hopeful that this bar may have something more than alcohol and gross water. Caduceus hates to disappoint her, but he opts for honesty, shaking his head and pointing to his satchel. 

“I brought my own, actually,” he considers Jester’s pouting face, then asks, “Do you want some?”

Jester nods and they sit in silence as Caduceus pours tea from a container he’d brought with him for emergencies. It’s not very good cold, but it’s better than bitter whiskey or dingy water. 

It’s almost unnatural to see Jester quiet and not vibrating with energy, but it looks effortless for her to be reserved and insightful when she wants to be. She has more depth than she gets credit for. 

Jester takes a sip, barely suppresses a grimace, then fidgets with the cup, something on her mind beside the unpleasant, lukewarm tea. Caduceus lets her think, waiting patiently. 

“Can you actually tell the future?” 

There’s a bright sparkle of hope in her eyes, but her subtle frown betrays her pessimism. Jester isn’t stupid, or as naïve as she appears, she knows Caduceus’ power can’t possibly be what she imagines it is.

Caduceus contemplates the question as he takes another sip of tea. There’s many answers to it, as there are to most questions. He settles on, “Not exactly.” 

“Hm,” she picks at her nails, avoiding eye contact, “Well, if you had to guess, do you think we’ll turn out ok? All of us, together like this?”

“Of course.” Caduceus grins as he looks around their group of misfits, all mixed up and actually _talking_ outside of their little cliques for once. “Have you met these people? I think it’d be difficult to keep them from doing anything they set their minds to.”

Jester laughs but her eyes seem far away, pondering something even Caduceus can’t read off her face. At last she smiles, turning to look out at the bar with that bright smile.

“They’re pretty amazing, aren’t they?” 

Caduceus follows her glance towards their friends, noting the deeply affectionate look on her face. It’s like she’s watching something incredible, the show of the century. 

At the bar, Molly and Beau are yelling “Chug! Chug! Chug!” as Fjord and Yasha take on the biggest cups of ale they could find. Caleb and Nott are both doing something that looks distinctly magical, likely trying to rig the game in their friend’s favor, but Caduceus can’t tell whether it works as Fjord chokes on his drink, leaving Yasha to gracefully finish hers off. Molly flips Beau a coin with a laugh and Caleb scowls at Nott, as if he too hadn’t been attempting to cheat, but hands over his coin with a good-natured chuckle. 

Caduceus nods absently in agreement, almost wishing he had something a little stronger than tea to get him through this chaos. 

“They’re definitely something.” 

Jester turns back to Caduceus and laughs at his slightly baffled expression. “It’s nice to have friends, isn’t it?”

Caduceus just hums the affirmative, sensing Jester has more to add. 

“I’m glad we all ran into each other,” she smiles, soft and sharp at once, “It’s kind of weird, almost like-“

“Destiny?”

“-fate.”

Jester laughs as they finish the sentence at the same time, and her whole face contorts with the laughter, eyes scrunching and cheeks raising. Caduceus’ amusement is more subtle, a crinkle at the corner of his eyes, but it’s just as heartfelt. 

Abruptly, dictated by her ever-changing, ever-chaotic moods, Jester’s face sheds its laughter and pulls on a mischievous expression, smirk overtaking her wide smile. She leans forward on her hands and rests her elbows on the table, lowering her voice as far as it goes (a stage-whisper) as if she’s telling Caduceus a secret, “I think it makes us kind of special. Like maybe we’re chosen ones, or something?”

Caduceus lets the teacup hide his expression. “Maybe.” 

Jester doesn’t notice or care to comment on Caduceus’ vague answer, immediately launching into her next ramble, “We’re friends because of fate. Fated friends. Fateful friends. The friendly fated ones.”

“Friends of fate?”

“I mean, if you want to choose the lamest way to say it, then sure.” 

Jester’s lilting accent and the smile shaping her words always makes them sound like a taunt, but Caduceus sees through it easily enough, appreciating the honest happiness behind it. She’s found her family here, in this bar full of idiots, criminals, and weirdos.

She looks down at her tea, no longer able to hide her dismay at the low-sugar, room-temperature drink. Despite the disappointing beverage, the noise all around her, and the worries she must have about the group, she smiles contentedly, warm as a cup of tea should be. 

“Friends of fate. I like it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for your patience in waiting for these last few chapters, I know there's been massive delays. I fell out of my schedule and never got back onto it. But it's finally done!
> 
> The idea for this fic was something I thought would be doomed to rot in my "Ideas" folder forever, so I am surprised and ecstatic that I finally, _finally_ got it finished! The character dynamics were very fun to write and I learned a few things about the characters in the process!
> 
> It's not perfect but as my first long, many chapter fanfic I'd say I'm pretty proud of this one! I really enjoyed reading all your comments and seeing y'all enjoy the story, and I appreciate every single one of you who took the time to write something nice! It helps me out enormously to see how people feel about my writing. 
> 
> This has seriously been kind of surreal for me to see how many people left kudos, commented and subscribed to this piece. I haven't been writing fanfic for very long, so it's pretty crazy to see readers actually like my stuff. 
> 
> As I mentioned in the last note, feel free to stop by my tumblr (thepetulantpen) to message/ask/whatever and also see anything else I'm working on! Thanks for all the support!
> 
> I hoped you liked the last chapter of Friends of Fate. Stay tuned for more of my work in the future (once I've recovered from this months long project)!


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